Jeez the year is going by rather quickly.
Bob Dylan Wins The Nobel Prize For Literature Thing
I didn't really remark upon it when it happened because I had ambition my plate at the time, but this business of handing Bob Dylan the Nobel Literature Prize is pretty radical. It's easy to understand the argument in its favour, because the work Dylan resonates everywhere in pop culture.
Dylan's influence is in the Beatles, so everybody downstream of Lennon and McCartney writing pop songs owe a debt to Dylan; Dylan comes to us through Jimi Hendrix with his monumental 'All Along the Watchtower'; Dylan comes through to us via Frank Zappa who was inspired by Dylan to write his on confronting lyrics; Bob Dylan comes to us through any number of folk singers or rock singers who took his song narratives to heart. If one is a Baby Boomer, threes no doubt Dylan worked words into their heads. It's understandable that a certain group of Baby Boomers might feel compelled to hand such a prize to Dylan.
The problem is, if you're willing to give the Literature Prize to Dylan for his contribution, it opens the door to king whether other categories of écriture fall under the purview of the Literature prize. It begs the question if, say, screenwriters and film directors would be considered in future. Or for that matter copywriters and sign-writers and editors of newspapers and performance poets, even. In choosing Dylan, they sort of open up the scope of the Literature prize so far, you wonder if they will ever able to keep it the semblance of a literary prize in the future.
Or, it might just a one off. If it is, then Bob Dylan's one lucky songwriter. If it's not, the Nobel Prize picking board is going to be in for a tougher time in future, because there will be any number of different types of writers who might be considered if Bob Dylan could be a winner.
It's curious it took a while for Bob Dylan to get back to the Nobel folks; it looked as if he were giving them a snub. When he did come out of his shell to talk about it, he was most gushing about the award. You got the feeling that maybe his manager swiped him a slap over the head when Dylan thought maybe the coolest thing would be to push the award right back.
'Prisoners'
There's been quite a number of these children-go-missing-andparents-go-berserk stories. The parental reaction is interesting in this one because they do take the law into their own hands.
Hugh Jackman plays an American survivalist. There's something of an ironic touch to his performance seeing that he's far from that kind of guy. Or maybe he secretly is like that and he's channeling his inner survivalist nut job. It's one of his better performances in the not-Wolverine division. Paul Dano plays an intellectually challenged man-child who Jackman suspects is the kidnapper and in turn kidnaps Dano's character.
Dano is great in this supporting role but wouldn't have been in any running for any Oscars because he "goes the full retard".
'Wild'
I guess this one is a sort of Gen-X-coming-to-grips-with-adulthood movies. Reese Witherspoon plays a woman who has a rough upbringing and becomes a reckless heroin addict who decides to clean up her act by going on a big hiking trip. And she does, end of story.
It's a strange kind of film where there is no real cathartic moment, just a stagger across the finish line and an abrupt ending. All the same it's a weird film filled with an uniquely American paranoia about other people and gender politics. Men are such inexplicable bastards in this film; even when they're being overly generous with the main character. She comes to the conclusion that maybe all the fucked up things she did are okay because it led her to the trail where she can contemplate her own life as some kind of emotional rollercoaster.
If you want to know what the world looks like from a Narcissistic Personality Disordered person, this is your film.
Cubs-Indians World Series
The Cleveland Indians haven't won the World Series since 1948. The Chicago Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908. They're both very long hoodoos, and one of them is going to get busted in this best-of-seven series. So far it's the Indians who are edging the Cubs 3-2. It's actually been quite good viewing. I hope it goes to Game 7.
I like the Indians' players. There's Andrew Miller who is the proxy-Yankee; Jose Ramirez is a revelation; Francisco Lindor is an exciting shortstop; and Corey Kluber is quite the crafty ace. I like the Cubs too. There's Aroldis Chapman who is the proxy-Yankee with the Cubs; Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo who are the power threats; Javier Baez is every bit as good at second as Lindor is at short; and Wilson Contreras is a damn fine catcher.
It's also funny seeing names like Hendricks and Baez on one side and Carlos Santana on the other. :)
A Gen-X View of the Universe.
"The Issue Isn't Pussy, It's Monkey" - from The Right Stuff
Film, Cinema, Movies, TV, Music, Rock
2016/10/31
2016/10/28
They Should Change Their Name To Unfairfax
Content Is Not King With Fairfax
It's been pissing me off for a few days so I'm going to have to jus get it out there.
A band - Black Bird Hum - were asked play at the Sydney Night Noodle Markets. They were told that they wouldn't get paid to play, but they should because of the exposure they would get. As any right thinking professional would, the band declined and put it out to the world that Fairfax (who own and run the Nigh Noodle Markets) would do such a thing as to ask a band to play for free.
It's been pissing me off for a few days so I'm going to have to jus get it out there.
A band - Black Bird Hum - were asked play at the Sydney Night Noodle Markets. They were told that they wouldn't get paid to play, but they should because of the exposure they would get. As any right thinking professional would, the band declined and put it out to the world that Fairfax (who own and run the Nigh Noodle Markets) would do such a thing as to ask a band to play for free.
Black Bird Hum declined the offer, which they received via an agent representing Fairfax. “We’re flattered to be on the radar of a company with an annual ‘Total Group Revenue of $1,867.2 million‘ (FY2016),” the band wrote on Facebook.
“We have, however, decided to decline the invitation to perform at the event on account of you deciding not to pay us.” The band noted how they have been paid for all of their upcoming tour dates, much like those who would’ve worked on Fairfax’s event.
“We’re guessing that the sound tech who ran the PA on the night was paid; as were the graphic designers and marketing companies that did the event website, promo and marketing material; and the companies that supplied the lighting, tables, chairs and umbrellas; and the cleaners,” they wrote.
But despite a Fairfax representative insisting to Crikey that they will “look at how we are engaging with everyone to ensure we are showing RESPECT”, they apparently still haven’t quite grasped the message.
In an article published earlier this week in The Advocate, a Tasmanian paper printed by Fairfax Regional Media, musicians are taken to task for their ungrateful entitlement, i.e. expecting to be paid for performing live.
And so things just got a bit more nasty. If you go to the Advocate, you will find one Elanor Watt writing:
The real question is, how strong is your passion and what are you willing to do to achieve your goals.
I assume most musicians love making and performing music, it is not one of those jobs that you simply decide to do as you don’t have any other choice, it is considerably passion related much like writing or sports.
If someone was really passionate about getting their music out there, and enjoyed performing then they would take up any opportunity given to them, especially if it means expanding their audiences, drawing in a larger fan base, because we have all seen the movies, anything can happen.
The next issue is worth. Some bands have explicitly implied taking the previous approach insists that artists, well some, do not need to be paid. Are they not worth payment, are the countless hours put into practicing not worth payment.
I consider this issue similar to one that many other people face.
The trade industry for example. My grandmother told me she worked for several years training to be a hairdresser, she was the one who paid for cutting people’s hair, cleaning up, like any employee, but she was paying to do this, to further her skills.
The same goes for university students, yes we pay to learn but we are churning out word after word, some people go on to write thesis’ and contribute to academic literature which is all unpaid.
These people all share the same desire to pursue their goals. They all do this to get ahead, musicians should be no different.In response to these comments, the argument they make completely rules out many other people who are in a similar situation as mentioned previously.
The band seems ungrateful to a potentially amazing opportunity that has been given to them. Dismissing events like this makes me wonder where this band will be in several years time, if they consistently have in their heads they are too good to be even approached for an unpaid gig, what has made them so entitled.
Hundreds of people would be honoured to play at such an event that draws in thousands of people, but hey. obviously royalties are more important to some people.
And so she goes. Where do you start? If a band played a live set at the Night Noodle Markets, clearly it's situation where the corporation is hiring a band to play. If they don't want to pay for it, they should say it's open mic and invite people who want to play for "exposure". Watch all the crazies come out of the woodwork with their banjos and ukuleles and glockenspiels. Of course, they won't do that because they want to ensure a certain standard of entertainment - which is kind of why they would have to pay for the band. It's just a standard business transaction.
If you have a stage with lights and a PA, and you have crew running around already, it's understandable that it's no big leap to think you can make it better by having a band. Except as the band point out, the lights and the stage and the audio techs are paid. Why on earth wouldn't Fairfax pay for the band? What possible reason could there be but outright disrespect for band musicians? Well, let's look at it in some more detail.
Fairfax are doing all these Night Noodle Market numbers in order to transition out of just being a print media company. I also know for a fact that they keep their budgets tight and hardly raise them year after year but expect more from their suppliers every year; I know that they charge a shit ton of money for these stall holders to participate; I know this results in stupendous prices when you go to the Night Noodle Markets. In that context, it surprises me none whatsoever that they don't want to pay musicians. They don't want to pay because it comes out of their margin - that's it. It's not profound; it's not some kind misunderstanding; it's not really difficult to understand.
Fairfax have conjured up an event where they charge stall holders money in exchange for providing an event space. They spend a portion of that money and squeeze out as much as possible from the production company so that they provide infrastructure such as power, lighting, staging, audio and assorted decorations. And the rest of it is their margin. It's a business, so you wouldn't do it if you didn't have a margin. The question then follows, if you're willing to have the infrastructure of a band performance and pay for it, why the hell wouldn't you want to pay for the band?
It really goes to the core of what Fairfax thinks is its content. Presumably they think it's the food and therefore not the band playing music. What really is staggering is that the people who produce this event think the band should come free in exchange for 'exposure', because that would suit Fairfax just fine. All this says is that Fairfax doesn't want to spend the money because it's greedy. There's nothing excusable about it or anything that can be misconstrued as a misunderstanding.
You know what's really crazy about all this? They've always been happy to pay some DJ in the past. Yes, a fucking DJ. Don't let anybody fool you that the Fairfax corporation has any "RESPECT" for musicians, or content.
2016/10/23
Star Trek Beyond
Where Some Men & Women Have Gone Before
You want these films to be good, but as with all series of movies that go into episodic sequels, the third film is prone to wearing out the welcome. And so welcome to a third film in a re-booted series after the original series films went six films (seven if you count 'Generations' where they killed Shatner-Kirk), which course came after 3 seasons72 episodes of television. We know more about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekhov than these characters themselves do.
It's therefore a lot harder to squeeze out new stuff with these tired old characters, even if the actors have been cast anew 2 films ago. The challenge is on.
Spoiler alert as usual. There will be many.
What's Good About It
The production design and CGI work is superb. The music is a little hysterical with its non-stop emotional cues but hangs together okay. It looks and sounds really glossy, which is nice. The actions sequences are big and exciting, the stunts superlative, and even the screen graphics on their instrument panels look wonderful.
The action is rollicking, which is the new established house style of these updated Star Trek films, which means there's much less time spent on the cerebral bits where the crew try and figure things out. If you don't think too deeply about it, then it's good clean entertainment but of course you're supposed to think about stuff with Star Trek, so maybe the action is too much eye candy. But that's complaining about too rich, right?
I had trouble getting my better half to watch this thing because it's an entrenched Sci Fi franchise that she has little interest in, but without knowing much of anything about it beyond the basics of who the characters were supposed to be, she actually liked it. So it must be working as a basic space opera action number. What follows is me nitpicking as a part-time, some-time, Trekkie.
What's Bad About It
The story is incoherent. And it's also a film that goes from one Star Trek trope to the next without much self-reflection. The motivation of the villain Kraal is kind of confused, and that would be because he's not really an alien, he's a human who first got shipwrecked, then driven insane, and then decided to suck the life out of other beings to be immortal, but managed to build a grudge against the Federation. Hence, in the final shake out it turns out that the crew hadn't turned up anywhere where no man had been before; didn't really meet a new nemesis, but somebody from their own world who went rogue; and then they never really recovered anything new. That's really not the Star Trek ethos.
It's also a bit easy that the swarm of ships (which we don't really know how Kraal got this technology or building capacity) can be compromised so easily by playing a bit of Beastie Boys at them through radio. Of course, it is a really cool track, but that's really not sufficient to make it a deus ex machina, is it?
One way of looking at this film is that the Star Trek franchise is in deep crisis. They won't admit it but if they're letting Simon Pegg write a script and Justin Lin is directing one of these films, they're in deeper shit than the second movie let on. This screed is not really against Simon Pegg as such, but more the fact that letting a fan write a big movie has its problems. Also, letting an action director without much subtlety in working character interaction is a recipe for disaster, and well, this film qualifies as at least a dog's breakfast.
What's Interesting About It
They attempt to work in a bit of intrinsic character conflict with Captain Kirk. Kirk, in this incarnation is a bit jaded with his 5 year mission, just over 3years into the big trek. If this were any other space captain and milieu, it would be okay. Except this is James T. Kirk. We've seen all the moments of intrinsic conflict imaginable with this character and being jaded with being the captain of the Enterprise is not one of those things. It's the kind of inconsistency that creeps in because the franchise has already run out of things to do with these characters.
Similarly with Mr. Spock, he is somewhat in doubt about his career in Starfleet and feels like he has to go procreate with other Vulcans. That this could even begin to be more important than being a science officer in Starfleet flies in the face of everything that's come before. Spock as Vulcan might have bigger issues. Like, the 'Ponfar' where he has to go home to Vulcan and mate every 7 years like some space salmon with pointy ears. Or that he has yet to attain the 'Kohlinar' the doctorate degree in pure logic they hand out on Vulcan - and even when the original Spock attained the 'Kohlinar', he went right back to the Federation.
The writers are making slip-ups because they can't keep it all straight. But worse still, the gigantic mass of what we do know about these characters should be precluding certain kinds of stories.
The Enterprise Goes Down, Again
They keep doing this in the movies for dramatic effect, but they keep blowing up the Enterprise. It started with 'The Search for Spock'. Then, they did again with the Next Gen Enterprise in 'Generations'. And now for dramatic effect, they blow it up in the movie and frankly it's getting to be old hat. Blowing up the Enterprise serves to put the captain and crew planet-side which allows for all the action on the surface of the alien planet, and that's well and good, but apart from the fact that it allows for the film to be an action piece, it doesn't really do much - and that makes it bad writing.
The first time the Enterprise got blown up on thing screen it was a big moment; the second time it was a bit of a retread that felt tired; doing it again here is just lazy. Yet this has always been the challenge of the Trek screenwriter: how to get the crew amidst the adventure on planet out of the ship, and raise their personal stakes in what happens dirt-side. The classic thing they would do was to make the transporter unworkable for whatever reasons for the duration of the episode. Scotty's job was to tell Captain Kirk "she canna do it."
It is therefore a pretty lame deus ex machina to have a spaceship ready for the crew to get off the planet, having lost their ship. Just how ridiculous a scenario this is, can be illustrated by substituting the situation on to an earlier age. Imagine, Captain Cook and his crew are marooned on an island where an evil empire is building a fleet to invade England. But Captain Cook manages to find an abandoned ship that has been there for 100years, and sets sail with it to beat the evil threat. Right. If it strains incredulity with sailing ships, it probably should strain incredulity with space ships.
The "Mr. Sulu Is Gay" Thing
George Takei played the original Mr Sulu. Since then he has come out and become an advocate for gay rights in the USA. So in tribute they ret-conned the character into being gay. I don't know how depressing this literalism is. As a kid I liked Mr. Sulu because 1) I am non-specific Asian and 2) he was part of Star Trek's diversity push. The mystery of his name covered so much together with the obvious Japanese-ness of George Takei's own heritage. The name Sulu is derived from an island in the Philippines where Gene Roddenberry served. The derivation of the first name Ikaru is even more mysterious. Yet there he was, somewhere in the future representing asian people in a very general way. It was important that Sulu wasn' specifically Chinese or Korean or Vietnamese or whatever.
Most importantly, together with Nichelle Nichols, George Takei himself represented non-white people getting a proper shot in a world of white people. Including Takei and Nichols lent tremendous power to Star Trek's moral authority - and back in the 1960s this was really important. Race politics was bringing fiercely in the background of 1960s from whence these characters come.
There's even a story about how Nichols wanted to quit Star Trek because all she got to do was open hailing frequencies but none other than Martin Luther King told her she was doing an important job, and that he was a fan of the show because she was there. I know exactly how he felt about that. The diversity of having Nichols and Takei and even Chekhov with the Russian name and Polish accent was incredibly important. (and it's nice to know a great a man as Dr. Martin Luther King was a part-time, some-time Trekkie).
George Takei himself has expressed not liking this development. Yes it was handled subtly and it normalised the LGBTQ life of the new Mr. Sulu, except it dumped an extra bit of diversity text on the character who was already doing a fine job. It got to the part of where diversity exists in the developed world. As it is in the current Star Trek universe, Spock - an alien - is having a relationship with a black woman; and Sulu, the asian guy is also carrying the mantle for gay people. If anything the other white guys remain pretty cis-gendered and carry no baggage whatsoever. Kirk is a hetero-white-male (and it would be hard to change that), and so are Scotty and Bones - but there's never been any real reason Scotty or Bones couldn't have been gay. By Making Sulu be gay, they've made their universe so the half of it is aliens and coloured people and LGBTQ people doing all of their weird 'Other' thing, and then there's a separate heroic population of heterosexual-white-males who hold positions of authority. It's a bit ... you know... self-serving for a white writer to be doing that.
I get why George Takei was uncomfortable with it; it's because it sells out Sulu in the eyes of the asian population while lumping him with the LGBTQ badge that wasn't exactly called for. Takei didn't think he was playing a gay person all those years. That LGBTQ thing belongs to Takei and his own personal history, and it wasn't for the writers with which to endow Sulu. They should have asked him, and he would have said, don't. I think George Takei would have liked that opportunity to explain why it was a bad idea.
You want these films to be good, but as with all series of movies that go into episodic sequels, the third film is prone to wearing out the welcome. And so welcome to a third film in a re-booted series after the original series films went six films (seven if you count 'Generations' where they killed Shatner-Kirk), which course came after 3 seasons72 episodes of television. We know more about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekhov than these characters themselves do.
It's therefore a lot harder to squeeze out new stuff with these tired old characters, even if the actors have been cast anew 2 films ago. The challenge is on.
Spoiler alert as usual. There will be many.
What's Good About It
The production design and CGI work is superb. The music is a little hysterical with its non-stop emotional cues but hangs together okay. It looks and sounds really glossy, which is nice. The actions sequences are big and exciting, the stunts superlative, and even the screen graphics on their instrument panels look wonderful.
The action is rollicking, which is the new established house style of these updated Star Trek films, which means there's much less time spent on the cerebral bits where the crew try and figure things out. If you don't think too deeply about it, then it's good clean entertainment but of course you're supposed to think about stuff with Star Trek, so maybe the action is too much eye candy. But that's complaining about too rich, right?
I had trouble getting my better half to watch this thing because it's an entrenched Sci Fi franchise that she has little interest in, but without knowing much of anything about it beyond the basics of who the characters were supposed to be, she actually liked it. So it must be working as a basic space opera action number. What follows is me nitpicking as a part-time, some-time, Trekkie.
What's Bad About It
The story is incoherent. And it's also a film that goes from one Star Trek trope to the next without much self-reflection. The motivation of the villain Kraal is kind of confused, and that would be because he's not really an alien, he's a human who first got shipwrecked, then driven insane, and then decided to suck the life out of other beings to be immortal, but managed to build a grudge against the Federation. Hence, in the final shake out it turns out that the crew hadn't turned up anywhere where no man had been before; didn't really meet a new nemesis, but somebody from their own world who went rogue; and then they never really recovered anything new. That's really not the Star Trek ethos.
It's also a bit easy that the swarm of ships (which we don't really know how Kraal got this technology or building capacity) can be compromised so easily by playing a bit of Beastie Boys at them through radio. Of course, it is a really cool track, but that's really not sufficient to make it a deus ex machina, is it?
One way of looking at this film is that the Star Trek franchise is in deep crisis. They won't admit it but if they're letting Simon Pegg write a script and Justin Lin is directing one of these films, they're in deeper shit than the second movie let on. This screed is not really against Simon Pegg as such, but more the fact that letting a fan write a big movie has its problems. Also, letting an action director without much subtlety in working character interaction is a recipe for disaster, and well, this film qualifies as at least a dog's breakfast.
What's Interesting About It
They attempt to work in a bit of intrinsic character conflict with Captain Kirk. Kirk, in this incarnation is a bit jaded with his 5 year mission, just over 3years into the big trek. If this were any other space captain and milieu, it would be okay. Except this is James T. Kirk. We've seen all the moments of intrinsic conflict imaginable with this character and being jaded with being the captain of the Enterprise is not one of those things. It's the kind of inconsistency that creeps in because the franchise has already run out of things to do with these characters.
Similarly with Mr. Spock, he is somewhat in doubt about his career in Starfleet and feels like he has to go procreate with other Vulcans. That this could even begin to be more important than being a science officer in Starfleet flies in the face of everything that's come before. Spock as Vulcan might have bigger issues. Like, the 'Ponfar' where he has to go home to Vulcan and mate every 7 years like some space salmon with pointy ears. Or that he has yet to attain the 'Kohlinar' the doctorate degree in pure logic they hand out on Vulcan - and even when the original Spock attained the 'Kohlinar', he went right back to the Federation.
The writers are making slip-ups because they can't keep it all straight. But worse still, the gigantic mass of what we do know about these characters should be precluding certain kinds of stories.
The Enterprise Goes Down, Again
They keep doing this in the movies for dramatic effect, but they keep blowing up the Enterprise. It started with 'The Search for Spock'. Then, they did again with the Next Gen Enterprise in 'Generations'. And now for dramatic effect, they blow it up in the movie and frankly it's getting to be old hat. Blowing up the Enterprise serves to put the captain and crew planet-side which allows for all the action on the surface of the alien planet, and that's well and good, but apart from the fact that it allows for the film to be an action piece, it doesn't really do much - and that makes it bad writing.
The first time the Enterprise got blown up on thing screen it was a big moment; the second time it was a bit of a retread that felt tired; doing it again here is just lazy. Yet this has always been the challenge of the Trek screenwriter: how to get the crew amidst the adventure on planet out of the ship, and raise their personal stakes in what happens dirt-side. The classic thing they would do was to make the transporter unworkable for whatever reasons for the duration of the episode. Scotty's job was to tell Captain Kirk "she canna do it."
It is therefore a pretty lame deus ex machina to have a spaceship ready for the crew to get off the planet, having lost their ship. Just how ridiculous a scenario this is, can be illustrated by substituting the situation on to an earlier age. Imagine, Captain Cook and his crew are marooned on an island where an evil empire is building a fleet to invade England. But Captain Cook manages to find an abandoned ship that has been there for 100years, and sets sail with it to beat the evil threat. Right. If it strains incredulity with sailing ships, it probably should strain incredulity with space ships.
The "Mr. Sulu Is Gay" Thing
George Takei played the original Mr Sulu. Since then he has come out and become an advocate for gay rights in the USA. So in tribute they ret-conned the character into being gay. I don't know how depressing this literalism is. As a kid I liked Mr. Sulu because 1) I am non-specific Asian and 2) he was part of Star Trek's diversity push. The mystery of his name covered so much together with the obvious Japanese-ness of George Takei's own heritage. The name Sulu is derived from an island in the Philippines where Gene Roddenberry served. The derivation of the first name Ikaru is even more mysterious. Yet there he was, somewhere in the future representing asian people in a very general way. It was important that Sulu wasn' specifically Chinese or Korean or Vietnamese or whatever.
Most importantly, together with Nichelle Nichols, George Takei himself represented non-white people getting a proper shot in a world of white people. Including Takei and Nichols lent tremendous power to Star Trek's moral authority - and back in the 1960s this was really important. Race politics was bringing fiercely in the background of 1960s from whence these characters come.
There's even a story about how Nichols wanted to quit Star Trek because all she got to do was open hailing frequencies but none other than Martin Luther King told her she was doing an important job, and that he was a fan of the show because she was there. I know exactly how he felt about that. The diversity of having Nichols and Takei and even Chekhov with the Russian name and Polish accent was incredibly important. (and it's nice to know a great a man as Dr. Martin Luther King was a part-time, some-time Trekkie).
George Takei himself has expressed not liking this development. Yes it was handled subtly and it normalised the LGBTQ life of the new Mr. Sulu, except it dumped an extra bit of diversity text on the character who was already doing a fine job. It got to the part of where diversity exists in the developed world. As it is in the current Star Trek universe, Spock - an alien - is having a relationship with a black woman; and Sulu, the asian guy is also carrying the mantle for gay people. If anything the other white guys remain pretty cis-gendered and carry no baggage whatsoever. Kirk is a hetero-white-male (and it would be hard to change that), and so are Scotty and Bones - but there's never been any real reason Scotty or Bones couldn't have been gay. By Making Sulu be gay, they've made their universe so the half of it is aliens and coloured people and LGBTQ people doing all of their weird 'Other' thing, and then there's a separate heroic population of heterosexual-white-males who hold positions of authority. It's a bit ... you know... self-serving for a white writer to be doing that.
I get why George Takei was uncomfortable with it; it's because it sells out Sulu in the eyes of the asian population while lumping him with the LGBTQ badge that wasn't exactly called for. Takei didn't think he was playing a gay person all those years. That LGBTQ thing belongs to Takei and his own personal history, and it wasn't for the writers with which to endow Sulu. They should have asked him, and he would have said, don't. I think George Takei would have liked that opportunity to explain why it was a bad idea.
2016/10/21
Quick Shots - 21/Oct/2016
World War III Is Brewing?
This past fortnight there were reports Russia was instructing its government people to bring back their kids from abroad. They were preparing for nuclear exchanges and World War III. At the same time there have been news reports saying the Pentagon is waring that World War III is looming large. Those sources are a bit fringe and hard to credit (especially in a world where fake news sites say extraordinary things in the hopes of harvesting clicks), but the main stream media all of a sudden is reporting similar things.
Other parties are also issuing warnings. The crux of the biscuit is Aleppo where Assad's forces are present and the Americans want to bomb them. Th Russians are still supporting Assad, and so it flies right in to Putin's face to be even thinking about it.
If World War III really is brewing over Syria, I'd want the West to abandon its plans in Syria. It's not worth it. Aleppo has been reduced to rubble, which is bad enough, but really, the continued conflict is creating more refugees by the day. As much as Bashar Assad is a horrible dictator to let go, turning Syria into a flashpoint for global conflict with the Russians is just unpalatable. That being said, you have to wonder about the timing. This close to the Presidential elections makes Obama a lame duck POTUS who is going into caretaker mode, so this would present an opportunity when American leadership is in a political limbo. If you're Putin and you meant to go to war with America, then this moment through to the end of the year represents an opportunity.
Anyway, it is interesting how these things are lining themselves up. I don't think there will be a world War III. I just think it's interesting people in power want to toy with the rhetoric of a World War.
Achilles' Choice
I am still shocked by the passing of Seiji Hirao. 53 seems much too young. He had everything in his life that he could ever want, but 53years is all he got. He certainly got more than Achilles, I guess. Lots of Important people have died younger. All the same I'm still shocked, and it makes me ponder about the meaning of things, this and that, and the value of life.
After I wrote my little entry on Hirao, I remembered the first time I met him in 1995. I'd left Dentsu Australia and was freelancing when Bucks Night Terry rang up and wanted me to dig up an old report I'd written for Dentsu in late 1994. The report was about the successful bid for the 2000 Olympics by the Sydney Olympics Committee, and the salient points to the strategy in how they went about trying to win. Dentsu at the time were busily preparing for the Nagano Olympics but wanted to try and get Osaka for 2004.
My report would have been about 20pages long. A lot of it was based on statements in the public record as well as Rod McGeoch's account in 'The Bid', plus ringing around a few sports bodies. When I filed it in 1994, I got no response whatsoever out of Dentsu Tokyo so I had forgotten all about it, but at the time I filed it, I would have told Bucks Night Terry what was in it and he remembered it.
Seiji Hirao came through Sydney on Kobe Steelers Rugby business but somehow made Bucks Night Terry his gopher, and Terry had told him about the report because Seiji Hirao told Terry he was part of the Osaka Committee. Terry was a classic panderer - hence his strange nickname - but he was very good at it. One thing led to another and I met Mr. Hirao in the office of Mino Metals in Chatswood. Mr. Hirao didn't want to read the report, he wanted me to give him an oral digest, so I spent 20 minutes going through the ins and outs of the Sydney bid's approach as far as I could piece together. He didn't say anything, simply nodded and walked out.
Afterwards Terry told me the report went to the Osaka Committee and that Mr. Hirao wanted to go all in on the recommendations I'd written. He also had some feedback about my presentation which I won't go into here, but basically nobody likes a smartarse and I am one. After that, he went off to the UK to coach the Japan Rugby team where the team famously got that historic drubbing of 145-17. Later that year he was backing Sydney and I had the chance to go drinking with Mr. Hirao and Bucks Night Terry. It was a bloody long night. I staggered home at 3 or 4 in the morning, drunk as a skunk.
For a few years there in the late 90s, Bucks Night Terry started being an agent for Australia Rugby payers looking for professional contracts in Japan. That's how I ended up interpreting at the contract negotiations. That was all Seiji Hirao helping out Terry. Mr. Hirao would come through Sydney about once a year and I would meet him now and then. I'm not sure I got along with him so much because when we were sober, we'd never really talk. I can remember quite a few uncomfortably silent rooms, just sitting with him. He was a gregarious guy when drunk but when sober, there were simply some people with whom he'd deign not talk, and I was one of them. Maybe he was shy, but it was hard to imagine.
I learned it can suck to meet famous people. Especially those with a lifelong record of success. no mater how humble they try to be, they just can't hide their ego. Mr. Hirao was one of those characters. He wasn't arrogant or meant to be superior; he just couldn't stop himself acting that way; and he wasn't the sort to be self-reflective about it either. He was in some ways a very awkward person to be around if you weren't from rugby or of rugby or about rugby. And I decidedly wasn't from his world where he was a king.
Anyway.... I lost touch with that whole thing about the time Bucks Night Terry closed up shop with his little agency business and started a restaurant. They were good friends and stayed in touch, but I fell out of Terry's orbit. It's just how life goes. Now that he's gone I can't stop thinking about those awkward moments of silence sitting in a room with Seiji Hirao, "Mr Rugby" of Japan.
It's really rough.
I rang Terry today and he was really bummed out, but he had known it was coming for about a year. He said he wished Mr. Hirao could have made it to the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 3years time, but it wasn't to be. In honour of the man Terry said he was giving up smoking. I don't know how long that vow's going to last but the fact that Terry wanted to vow it, alone spoke volumes.
If nothing else, I am bummed out.
UPDATE:
I understated how funny he could be. I've been reading a transcript of one of his last speeches and in it is a line about how much he loved rugby. He said you have to love what you do. "Nobody I know ever became no.1 in Japan doing something they had to do because they had no other options in life".
This past fortnight there were reports Russia was instructing its government people to bring back their kids from abroad. They were preparing for nuclear exchanges and World War III. At the same time there have been news reports saying the Pentagon is waring that World War III is looming large. Those sources are a bit fringe and hard to credit (especially in a world where fake news sites say extraordinary things in the hopes of harvesting clicks), but the main stream media all of a sudden is reporting similar things.
Other parties are also issuing warnings. The crux of the biscuit is Aleppo where Assad's forces are present and the Americans want to bomb them. Th Russians are still supporting Assad, and so it flies right in to Putin's face to be even thinking about it.
If World War III really is brewing over Syria, I'd want the West to abandon its plans in Syria. It's not worth it. Aleppo has been reduced to rubble, which is bad enough, but really, the continued conflict is creating more refugees by the day. As much as Bashar Assad is a horrible dictator to let go, turning Syria into a flashpoint for global conflict with the Russians is just unpalatable. That being said, you have to wonder about the timing. This close to the Presidential elections makes Obama a lame duck POTUS who is going into caretaker mode, so this would present an opportunity when American leadership is in a political limbo. If you're Putin and you meant to go to war with America, then this moment through to the end of the year represents an opportunity.
Anyway, it is interesting how these things are lining themselves up. I don't think there will be a world War III. I just think it's interesting people in power want to toy with the rhetoric of a World War.
Achilles' Choice
I am still shocked by the passing of Seiji Hirao. 53 seems much too young. He had everything in his life that he could ever want, but 53years is all he got. He certainly got more than Achilles, I guess. Lots of Important people have died younger. All the same I'm still shocked, and it makes me ponder about the meaning of things, this and that, and the value of life.
After I wrote my little entry on Hirao, I remembered the first time I met him in 1995. I'd left Dentsu Australia and was freelancing when Bucks Night Terry rang up and wanted me to dig up an old report I'd written for Dentsu in late 1994. The report was about the successful bid for the 2000 Olympics by the Sydney Olympics Committee, and the salient points to the strategy in how they went about trying to win. Dentsu at the time were busily preparing for the Nagano Olympics but wanted to try and get Osaka for 2004.
My report would have been about 20pages long. A lot of it was based on statements in the public record as well as Rod McGeoch's account in 'The Bid', plus ringing around a few sports bodies. When I filed it in 1994, I got no response whatsoever out of Dentsu Tokyo so I had forgotten all about it, but at the time I filed it, I would have told Bucks Night Terry what was in it and he remembered it.
Seiji Hirao came through Sydney on Kobe Steelers Rugby business but somehow made Bucks Night Terry his gopher, and Terry had told him about the report because Seiji Hirao told Terry he was part of the Osaka Committee. Terry was a classic panderer - hence his strange nickname - but he was very good at it. One thing led to another and I met Mr. Hirao in the office of Mino Metals in Chatswood. Mr. Hirao didn't want to read the report, he wanted me to give him an oral digest, so I spent 20 minutes going through the ins and outs of the Sydney bid's approach as far as I could piece together. He didn't say anything, simply nodded and walked out.
Afterwards Terry told me the report went to the Osaka Committee and that Mr. Hirao wanted to go all in on the recommendations I'd written. He also had some feedback about my presentation which I won't go into here, but basically nobody likes a smartarse and I am one. After that, he went off to the UK to coach the Japan Rugby team where the team famously got that historic drubbing of 145-17. Later that year he was backing Sydney and I had the chance to go drinking with Mr. Hirao and Bucks Night Terry. It was a bloody long night. I staggered home at 3 or 4 in the morning, drunk as a skunk.
For a few years there in the late 90s, Bucks Night Terry started being an agent for Australia Rugby payers looking for professional contracts in Japan. That's how I ended up interpreting at the contract negotiations. That was all Seiji Hirao helping out Terry. Mr. Hirao would come through Sydney about once a year and I would meet him now and then. I'm not sure I got along with him so much because when we were sober, we'd never really talk. I can remember quite a few uncomfortably silent rooms, just sitting with him. He was a gregarious guy when drunk but when sober, there were simply some people with whom he'd deign not talk, and I was one of them. Maybe he was shy, but it was hard to imagine.
I learned it can suck to meet famous people. Especially those with a lifelong record of success. no mater how humble they try to be, they just can't hide their ego. Mr. Hirao was one of those characters. He wasn't arrogant or meant to be superior; he just couldn't stop himself acting that way; and he wasn't the sort to be self-reflective about it either. He was in some ways a very awkward person to be around if you weren't from rugby or of rugby or about rugby. And I decidedly wasn't from his world where he was a king.
Anyway.... I lost touch with that whole thing about the time Bucks Night Terry closed up shop with his little agency business and started a restaurant. They were good friends and stayed in touch, but I fell out of Terry's orbit. It's just how life goes. Now that he's gone I can't stop thinking about those awkward moments of silence sitting in a room with Seiji Hirao, "Mr Rugby" of Japan.
It's really rough.
I rang Terry today and he was really bummed out, but he had known it was coming for about a year. He said he wished Mr. Hirao could have made it to the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 3years time, but it wasn't to be. In honour of the man Terry said he was giving up smoking. I don't know how long that vow's going to last but the fact that Terry wanted to vow it, alone spoke volumes.
If nothing else, I am bummed out.
UPDATE:
I understated how funny he could be. I've been reading a transcript of one of his last speeches and in it is a line about how much he loved rugby. He said you have to love what you do. "Nobody I know ever became no.1 in Japan doing something they had to do because they had no other options in life".
2016/10/20
Seiji Hirao (1963-2016)
"Mr. Rugby"
I've met Seiji Hirao several times. He wanted to catch the Southern Hemisphere so badly.
On all occasions he was visiting Australia for the purposes of furthering Rugby in Japan, although the very last time I met him, he was the guest of Japan Airlines to talk about Australian wine and rugby at this very strange event I produced. It's weird when you meet famous people and they want to talk to you as if you know every aspect of their careers. He had a lot of rugby career that he assumed I would know, and his conversations would just start from some point of thought in the long line of his successful life. I would often just shut up and listen - he was unique because he was the embodiment of all rugby in Japan. Where he went, what he learned, what he applied, was all important. Every bit of it; and he had been living that life since he was a teenager.
His playing career was prodigious in Japan, representing the national team at the age of nineteen. He was somebody who had success early but also went out to the world to find just how big the world was. It humbled him and made him very frank. I recall him discussing the defeat of Japan at the hands of the All Blacks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup where he was the head coach of Japan. Before leaving Japan - knowing his team would face the All Blacks in the group rounds, - he asked his mentor if there was any one aspect of the game where the Japanese team could get an edge on the All Blacks. He was told, absolutely none. And so it became a mission to play hard and die on the pitch.
And that's how that went down.
The amazing thing about meeting Seiji Hirao was that he never ran or hid from that 145-17 defeat which remains the largest margin of defeat in Rugby World Cup history. When I - rudely, because I am a rude man - asked him about it, he smiled and said, sometimes the other team is simply too good. You can live with defeats like that. There's an important life lesson right there. Everybody is born to a different star with different talents and circumstance. Sometimes you meet opponents who have much, much more than what you can bring to the field. There is no dishonour in those losses, no regrets or recriminations.
He was very much a man from Kansai, that is to say he had a deeply rational approach to things and relied deeply upon his intuition and inspiration. I think he liked to be unpredictable to get an edge, so in that sense he was a speculative kind of guy. There was something infra-cultural about that I recognised as my own, that drew me in. He certainly wasn't short of charisma, but the bit that appealed to me the most was his fearless desire in going for the long shot. Whatever one thought of the man, you had to admire that spirit.
It is reported he was battling illness for a long while. He never made public what it was, but 53 is much too young. RIP Seiji Hirao.
I've met Seiji Hirao several times. He wanted to catch the Southern Hemisphere so badly.
On all occasions he was visiting Australia for the purposes of furthering Rugby in Japan, although the very last time I met him, he was the guest of Japan Airlines to talk about Australian wine and rugby at this very strange event I produced. It's weird when you meet famous people and they want to talk to you as if you know every aspect of their careers. He had a lot of rugby career that he assumed I would know, and his conversations would just start from some point of thought in the long line of his successful life. I would often just shut up and listen - he was unique because he was the embodiment of all rugby in Japan. Where he went, what he learned, what he applied, was all important. Every bit of it; and he had been living that life since he was a teenager.
His playing career was prodigious in Japan, representing the national team at the age of nineteen. He was somebody who had success early but also went out to the world to find just how big the world was. It humbled him and made him very frank. I recall him discussing the defeat of Japan at the hands of the All Blacks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup where he was the head coach of Japan. Before leaving Japan - knowing his team would face the All Blacks in the group rounds, - he asked his mentor if there was any one aspect of the game where the Japanese team could get an edge on the All Blacks. He was told, absolutely none. And so it became a mission to play hard and die on the pitch.
And that's how that went down.
The amazing thing about meeting Seiji Hirao was that he never ran or hid from that 145-17 defeat which remains the largest margin of defeat in Rugby World Cup history. When I - rudely, because I am a rude man - asked him about it, he smiled and said, sometimes the other team is simply too good. You can live with defeats like that. There's an important life lesson right there. Everybody is born to a different star with different talents and circumstance. Sometimes you meet opponents who have much, much more than what you can bring to the field. There is no dishonour in those losses, no regrets or recriminations.
He was very much a man from Kansai, that is to say he had a deeply rational approach to things and relied deeply upon his intuition and inspiration. I think he liked to be unpredictable to get an edge, so in that sense he was a speculative kind of guy. There was something infra-cultural about that I recognised as my own, that drew me in. He certainly wasn't short of charisma, but the bit that appealed to me the most was his fearless desire in going for the long shot. Whatever one thought of the man, you had to admire that spirit.
It is reported he was battling illness for a long while. He never made public what it was, but 53 is much too young. RIP Seiji Hirao.
2016/10/18
China Versus Crown Resorts
The Business End Of The Stick Meets The Sticky End Of The Business
I've been wondering for sometime just what on earth is going with Crown Resorts. First of all, they don't perform well for shareholders. Generally speaking, in a two horse race kind of way, had you held shares in Echo Entertainment/Star City over the last few years, you would've made more money than with Crown. The other thing that makes you wonder is that James Packer's gone and put all of Crown's eggs in to a basket that targets Chinese high-rollers. Which, of course when you think about it can only lead you to the conclusion that Crown intends to be the money launderer of choice for corrupt Chinese officials on the mainland. Which is pretty extraordinary. Imagine another business model based on targeting criminals and helping them launder money somehow and see if you think that is sustainable. Unless you're big corporations doing the elaborate international tax dodging, it's pretty hard to spot the opportunities, let alone the sustainability of such a venture.
It's a bit like parking a cruise ship casino off the shores of say, Columbia, in the hopes that the big drug lords come and gamble away millions in your casino using it as money laundering service. There's something fundamentally crooked and wrong about the arrangement. Yet, there was Mr. Packer the Junior, right at the door step of mainland China with his casino on Macau, and a sales team targeting 'whales'. How long could that have lasted? It assumes the Chinese authorities don't care when they say they do care. I presumes that corruption and its ill-gotten gains are monies that can be taken away and out of China, and really, how can that be a sustainable business model?
Turns out the communist Chinese weren't going to sit around and play patty cake when they could reach for the bat and play hardball.
The things is, if there's one thing it brings to mind, it is the One.Tel debacle over which Mr. Packer the Diminutive and his pal Wee Lockie Murdoch presided. In that instance they were proceeding with a business model that was hardly sustainable (nor made any sense) in a bid for more customers, only to find the gravity of their situation was enough to suck the entire venture down. As with that instance, Mr. Packer the Lesser, has found an unsustainable business model and stuck with it in the face of reality. He may have inherited a fortune but it seems abundantly clear that he doesn't know what he's doing with it. He is beginning to look like that joke where a man puts out a book "How I Came to be Worth $1million" You open the book and it tells you how the man inherited $1billion and squandered most of it.
I've been wondering for sometime just what on earth is going with Crown Resorts. First of all, they don't perform well for shareholders. Generally speaking, in a two horse race kind of way, had you held shares in Echo Entertainment/Star City over the last few years, you would've made more money than with Crown. The other thing that makes you wonder is that James Packer's gone and put all of Crown's eggs in to a basket that targets Chinese high-rollers. Which, of course when you think about it can only lead you to the conclusion that Crown intends to be the money launderer of choice for corrupt Chinese officials on the mainland. Which is pretty extraordinary. Imagine another business model based on targeting criminals and helping them launder money somehow and see if you think that is sustainable. Unless you're big corporations doing the elaborate international tax dodging, it's pretty hard to spot the opportunities, let alone the sustainability of such a venture.
It's a bit like parking a cruise ship casino off the shores of say, Columbia, in the hopes that the big drug lords come and gamble away millions in your casino using it as money laundering service. There's something fundamentally crooked and wrong about the arrangement. Yet, there was Mr. Packer the Junior, right at the door step of mainland China with his casino on Macau, and a sales team targeting 'whales'. How long could that have lasted? It assumes the Chinese authorities don't care when they say they do care. I presumes that corruption and its ill-gotten gains are monies that can be taken away and out of China, and really, how can that be a sustainable business model?
Turns out the communist Chinese weren't going to sit around and play patty cake when they could reach for the bat and play hardball.
Crown Resorts employees including three top Australian executives have been held incommunicado since Chinese police executed a series of late-night raids at their homes across several mainland cities on Thursday.
The company, consular officials and distraught families have been unable to establish contact with the group.
Shanghai-based Crown employee Jiang Ling answered her door at midnight on Thursday to find five plain-clothed police officers outside her apartment.
"I kept saying ... 'Why are you here?'. They kept repeating 'Oh, your wife knows' and she didn't obviously… they finally said 'gambling'," Ms Jiang's husband, American expatriate Jeff Sikkema told Fairfax Media.
"The main thing that I understood ... they wanted to know was who her boss was and some of her other colleagues, just looking for names."That sounds like they mean business, doesn't it? It impacted share prices on casino operators.
The Chinese foreign ministry confirmed over the weekend the Australians detained on suspicion of committing "gambling crimes", without specifying how many. It said the case remained under investigation.
Shares in other casino operators in the region fell in response to the arrests
Crown's largest Australian competitor, The Star, did not escape the fallout - its share price fell more than 5 per cent but closed down 3.66 per cent.
Hong Kong-listed Sands China fell as much as 5.4 per cent, while Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. lost as much as 4.7 per cent on Monday.
South Korea's largest operator of casinos for foreigners Paradise fell as much as 0.7 per cent in Seoul trading, while fellow Korean casino operator Grand Korea Leisure Co. declined as much as 0.9 percent. Melco Crown Philippines Resorts
Corp lost as much as 1.6 percent in Manila.
"This is a clearer signal to all casino operators and junkets in the region, that the Chinese government doesn't like gambling and will continue the crackdown on the industry and capital outflow," said Tony Tong, founder of Hong Kong-based risk management consulting firm Pacific Financial Services Ltd.
Ouch. Crown itself lost 13.9%, down to $11.15 per share. Apparently that is half a billion dollars of Mr Packer the Minor's worth down the gurgler; that'd suck quite a bit.
It's arguable whether it is the gambling the communist Chinese brass dislike so much, or the very real ease with which money floods out of China through the casinos. As I said above, if you're on their doorstep and your business plan is to hoover up the escaping money from the mainland, it's no surprise the Chinese government is going to pick a fight with you.
I understood the reasoning when Mr. Packer the Junior, sold out of Channel Nine and the TV business in order to get into the gambling business, but even allowing for the decline in the free-to-air TV business, it seemed a little drastic to want to go all in on Casinos, and ones with Chinese VIPs as the main targets at that. He's ignored all the noises from China that they're trying to stem the flow of money outwards since the GFC. It's not like this is a surprising development. I won't slam Packer on the morality stakes of wanting to be in the gambling business, but it does seem incredibly blinkered to not have seen this sort of development coming.
The things is, if there's one thing it brings to mind, it is the One.Tel debacle over which Mr. Packer the Diminutive and his pal Wee Lockie Murdoch presided. In that instance they were proceeding with a business model that was hardly sustainable (nor made any sense) in a bid for more customers, only to find the gravity of their situation was enough to suck the entire venture down. As with that instance, Mr. Packer the Lesser, has found an unsustainable business model and stuck with it in the face of reality. He may have inherited a fortune but it seems abundantly clear that he doesn't know what he's doing with it. He is beginning to look like that joke where a man puts out a book "How I Came to be Worth $1million" You open the book and it tells you how the man inherited $1billion and squandered most of it.
2016/10/17
Quick Shots - 17/Oct/2016
Some things I've been watching....
The Nice Guys
Shane Black is continuing his little run of doing films. On the back of 'Iron Man 3', he's directed this 70s retro private eye film with a slight nod to 'LA Confidential'. Yes, it features Russell Crowe in his boofy middle-aged lumpy look but also a plastic-surgery-added Kim Basinger as the evil mother.
It's not as good as you hope it would be, even as Ryan Gosling turns in a funny little character study of a down-and-out Paper-Moon-esque thing. Of course this being a Sae Black film, the 13year old girl is a wiseacre with the most chutzpah of any of the characters. Angourie Rice steals the show in a performance that does not lemon she's an Aussie, with echoes of both Tatum O'Neal in 'Paper Moon', and Jodie Foster in 'Taxi Driver'.
Maybe it's a film more for the studied Witterati. I liked it but Can't see it appealing to a whole lot of people.
Elvis And Nixon
This is the latest film in a sub-genre of films that features Elvis Presley as a character. Actually, it's also a new entry into the sub-genre of films where Richard Nixon is a character. Maybe the great thing here is that it masks the two genres together and you have both these larger-than-life characters sharing the screen.
Michael Shannon does a great job to evoke the somewhat off-kilter and perhaps Aspergers patient Elvis Presley. Kevin Spacey plays Nixon and it's more of a caricature than a proper attempt to bring Nixon to the screen. While Shannon's Presley seems to have genuine depth, Spacey's Nixon seems more of a parody of gestures and body language. After all, Spacey's already playing a very scary President in 'House of Cards', so the one thing we weren't going get was a naturalistic, understated, delicate performance from Spacey. The good thing is that he seems very comfortable in the Oval Office set. Oddly enough, this Oval office looks larger than the one Spacey normally works in, on 'House of Cards'.
Between the two figures, Elvis actually comes across as a better human being, for all his bizarre predilections. Nixon is forever going to be a dour dog (an that insults dogs everywhere).
Narcos, Season 2
Oh brother. This season isn't as interested in the minutiae of the druglord life as the first season it zooms along to its season-ending climax simply to get there in a hurry. It's also a season which sees Pablo Escobar on the downslope and it gets a lot less glorious than the first season. Maybe the creators felt compelled to downplay the glories of a druglord who shook a nation, but this season seemed a lot more perfunctory and that's a shame.
the good news is the show is called 'Narcos' and not 'Escobar' so presumably there's a lot more to come, to do with the CIA backing the Cali syndicate as well as the crazy right-winger kick-murder squad that take to drug trafficking.
The Nice Guys
Shane Black is continuing his little run of doing films. On the back of 'Iron Man 3', he's directed this 70s retro private eye film with a slight nod to 'LA Confidential'. Yes, it features Russell Crowe in his boofy middle-aged lumpy look but also a plastic-surgery-added Kim Basinger as the evil mother.
It's not as good as you hope it would be, even as Ryan Gosling turns in a funny little character study of a down-and-out Paper-Moon-esque thing. Of course this being a Sae Black film, the 13year old girl is a wiseacre with the most chutzpah of any of the characters. Angourie Rice steals the show in a performance that does not lemon she's an Aussie, with echoes of both Tatum O'Neal in 'Paper Moon', and Jodie Foster in 'Taxi Driver'.
Maybe it's a film more for the studied Witterati. I liked it but Can't see it appealing to a whole lot of people.
Elvis And Nixon
This is the latest film in a sub-genre of films that features Elvis Presley as a character. Actually, it's also a new entry into the sub-genre of films where Richard Nixon is a character. Maybe the great thing here is that it masks the two genres together and you have both these larger-than-life characters sharing the screen.
Michael Shannon does a great job to evoke the somewhat off-kilter and perhaps Aspergers patient Elvis Presley. Kevin Spacey plays Nixon and it's more of a caricature than a proper attempt to bring Nixon to the screen. While Shannon's Presley seems to have genuine depth, Spacey's Nixon seems more of a parody of gestures and body language. After all, Spacey's already playing a very scary President in 'House of Cards', so the one thing we weren't going get was a naturalistic, understated, delicate performance from Spacey. The good thing is that he seems very comfortable in the Oval Office set. Oddly enough, this Oval office looks larger than the one Spacey normally works in, on 'House of Cards'.
Between the two figures, Elvis actually comes across as a better human being, for all his bizarre predilections. Nixon is forever going to be a dour dog (an that insults dogs everywhere).
Narcos, Season 2
Oh brother. This season isn't as interested in the minutiae of the druglord life as the first season it zooms along to its season-ending climax simply to get there in a hurry. It's also a season which sees Pablo Escobar on the downslope and it gets a lot less glorious than the first season. Maybe the creators felt compelled to downplay the glories of a druglord who shook a nation, but this season seemed a lot more perfunctory and that's a shame.
the good news is the show is called 'Narcos' and not 'Escobar' so presumably there's a lot more to come, to do with the CIA backing the Cali syndicate as well as the crazy right-winger kick-murder squad that take to drug trafficking.
2016/10/16
'Ghostbusters' 2016 Reboot
Who You Gonna Not Call?
Sometimes you meet people who have a longing for the past and some part of history they never lived, but when you talk to them, you find out that they have no idea what those times were like. That's what it's like talking to a millennial who claims to love 80s cinema and lists 'Ghostbusters' I &II as those moments for which they wished they were there. Yes, I've met those and I scratch my head. And yes, it's hard to believe, but in the Big Now, all kinds of cultural flotsam can attain a critical mass of public support, and so you have this imaginary necessity to "bring it up to date." It even came upon 'Ghostbusters' as something to reboot.
That's all on one side. The other side of it is those who decry the reboot because it features 4 women instead of men. I mean really? In 2016?
In case you haven't watched this film for either of the above reasons, but might be persuaded to watch it by some reasoning, and yet do not wish to have it spoiled for you, here is your spoiler warning now.
What's Good About It
It's actually good that it's an all-woman team. It's about the most fresh thing about it; and while Kristen Wiig's character Erin spends her time pining for Chris Hemsworth's himbo Kevin, in most part it has nothing to do with romantic involvements - which is as it should be.It's wall-to-wall female characters talking about things in the plot and not some romantic interest. it ought to pass one of those dumb Hollywood 'rules' about screenwriting.
Just as Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray were the peak comedic talent of their day, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig are top comedic talent of this day and they flex their chops reasonably well. It's really on the par with the originals; not that the originals were on exactly a high plane. You're not getting short-changed. Aspects of this one might be better than the original.
Also, it's pretty cool watching a movie where the sisters are doing it for themselves saving the city. I mean, really, why the hell not? I fail to see how this would have been a better movie if it were four guys doing the action - we've seen what that looks like 30 years ago. Some of it is better because it's women slinging the ray guns, getting covered in buckets of ectoplasm and blowing up the evil ghosts.
What's Bad About It
the flip side of all that is that it really is the same old dross. The original movies weren't exactly the high points of 1980s cinema, more like a symptom of what was wrong with it, but with some redeeming features. It was more of a pig with very nice lipstick - if you're into lipstick, it might have even been great for you.
Also, the trailer pitches the film as a sequel but in fact this is a reboot. Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd make cameo appearances, but their characters have nothing to do with their original characters. Some truth in advertising would have been appreciated.
The climax is a little weak. It's more focused on the central action, but it doesn't have the deranged quality of the original where the conversation in the Mayor's office descends into name-calling and dick jokes, just as the Titanic pulls into the harbour. The climax of this one is more camp than comedy, with Chris Hemsworth leading a dance routine from the top of an awning. It owes more to the Village People than 'Ghostbusters'.
What's Interesting About It
The fury projected at this film before it was even released was something rude. There' something histrionic about the public when it comes to gender politics in 2016; it's even more strident than race politics, and it seems totally out of kilter with the subject matter. Let's face it, it's comedy action movie about four people who go around capturing errant ghosts. The comedy is character comedy so does it really matter if the ghostbusters are men, women, or any subgroup of LGBQTI?
I asked my significant other if she felt empowered watching women play these roles and she said no. In her opinion, it felt far more empowering seeing Julia Gillard become Prime Minister (by hook or crook, she didn't care how it came about) and is feeling the empowerment from Hillary Clinton's campaign to become POTUS much more than fro this bit of confected puff. So kvetching about four women playing these roles instead of men seemed tremendously trivial to her.
I guess I'd normally say people need to grow up, but these are grownups screaming this stuff on the internet, losing their shit so to speak. While I'm no fan of the kind of social justice warrior brand of feminism, the casting of these actors is hardly that kind of feminism. I guess there are a lot of white male egos out there feeling they're losing their entitlement and need to fight over every bit of turf they can find. But it's asinine. It really is.
Diversity? Uh-huh
Way back when, the Ghostbusters were 3 white guys and a black guy and it felt like a solid step towards diversity. This time it's three white women and a black woman and it feels natural, but it also feels like it's not diverse enough. I guess times change and Hollywood is sometimes behind its own curve.
Also, the black woman played by Leslie Jones comes from blue collar Queens. As realistic as it might seem to some people (it's a kind of crappy realism that saps joy), I would've preferred it if she were the one who was the dedicated ghost researcher (Melissa McCarthy's role), and Erin's old friend. In turn if McCarthy played the engineer, it would have been funnier; and if Kate McKinnon played the girl from Queens working for the MTA, it might have been sharper. Of course the star-billing wouldn't have allowed for that construction, so it's a pipe dream. Instead we're stuck with the stereotyping of the Leslie Jones as coming from a blue collar background which kinda sucks and undercuts the argument it is in favour of the diversity it is implying.
Was This Worth Doing?
I'm torn about this one. Was the original so good it needed to be left alone? Probably not. Was it so bad it needed to be brought up to ate? Probably not. Both of the 80s instalments were middlingly okay films. Not that I believe in giving star ratings, but they were 3.5-out-of-5 sort of films. Hollywood is overflowing with 3.5 stars sort of films partly because they don't want to do much better lest it raise the bar too high, and go over people's heads.
To then make this film and it too hit about 3.5 stars, makes you wonder if the world really needed another 3.5 stars movie let alone another 3.5 Ghostbusters movie. One side of me says, "hell why not? More the merrier and what else were they going to do?" ...and yet another side says "Surely there's something better for this talent to be deployed."
I don't know. It's actually quite hard.
Charisma Is A Funny Thing
Stars are what movie execs pay big big big money for, exactly because they're the people with the charisma to keep the audience watching. Both Wiig and McCarthy are charismatic enough to carry the film, but the film gets eaten alive by Chris Hemsworth's Kevin anytime he's on screen interacting with the characters. Part of it is that Hemsworth's already saved New York City once in 'Avengers', so anytime the threat of the ghosts looms over New York City and Kevin is nonchalant and stupid, it's like an in-joke about Hemsworth actually being Thor. Yet the more significant part of it is that his star power is overpowering, so much so he takes over the end title sequence.
Equally, Bill Murray is on screen for all of three minutes, but you just keep wanting more of the guy. Andy Garcia plays the mayor and he too is on screen for 4 scenes. You want more of the guy, but he's gone. It's a pretty strange film that way.
Sometimes you meet people who have a longing for the past and some part of history they never lived, but when you talk to them, you find out that they have no idea what those times were like. That's what it's like talking to a millennial who claims to love 80s cinema and lists 'Ghostbusters' I &II as those moments for which they wished they were there. Yes, I've met those and I scratch my head. And yes, it's hard to believe, but in the Big Now, all kinds of cultural flotsam can attain a critical mass of public support, and so you have this imaginary necessity to "bring it up to date." It even came upon 'Ghostbusters' as something to reboot.
That's all on one side. The other side of it is those who decry the reboot because it features 4 women instead of men. I mean really? In 2016?
In case you haven't watched this film for either of the above reasons, but might be persuaded to watch it by some reasoning, and yet do not wish to have it spoiled for you, here is your spoiler warning now.
What's Good About It
It's actually good that it's an all-woman team. It's about the most fresh thing about it; and while Kristen Wiig's character Erin spends her time pining for Chris Hemsworth's himbo Kevin, in most part it has nothing to do with romantic involvements - which is as it should be.It's wall-to-wall female characters talking about things in the plot and not some romantic interest. it ought to pass one of those dumb Hollywood 'rules' about screenwriting.
Just as Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray were the peak comedic talent of their day, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig are top comedic talent of this day and they flex their chops reasonably well. It's really on the par with the originals; not that the originals were on exactly a high plane. You're not getting short-changed. Aspects of this one might be better than the original.
Also, it's pretty cool watching a movie where the sisters are doing it for themselves saving the city. I mean, really, why the hell not? I fail to see how this would have been a better movie if it were four guys doing the action - we've seen what that looks like 30 years ago. Some of it is better because it's women slinging the ray guns, getting covered in buckets of ectoplasm and blowing up the evil ghosts.
What's Bad About It
the flip side of all that is that it really is the same old dross. The original movies weren't exactly the high points of 1980s cinema, more like a symptom of what was wrong with it, but with some redeeming features. It was more of a pig with very nice lipstick - if you're into lipstick, it might have even been great for you.
Also, the trailer pitches the film as a sequel but in fact this is a reboot. Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd make cameo appearances, but their characters have nothing to do with their original characters. Some truth in advertising would have been appreciated.
The climax is a little weak. It's more focused on the central action, but it doesn't have the deranged quality of the original where the conversation in the Mayor's office descends into name-calling and dick jokes, just as the Titanic pulls into the harbour. The climax of this one is more camp than comedy, with Chris Hemsworth leading a dance routine from the top of an awning. It owes more to the Village People than 'Ghostbusters'.
What's Interesting About It
The fury projected at this film before it was even released was something rude. There' something histrionic about the public when it comes to gender politics in 2016; it's even more strident than race politics, and it seems totally out of kilter with the subject matter. Let's face it, it's comedy action movie about four people who go around capturing errant ghosts. The comedy is character comedy so does it really matter if the ghostbusters are men, women, or any subgroup of LGBQTI?
I asked my significant other if she felt empowered watching women play these roles and she said no. In her opinion, it felt far more empowering seeing Julia Gillard become Prime Minister (by hook or crook, she didn't care how it came about) and is feeling the empowerment from Hillary Clinton's campaign to become POTUS much more than fro this bit of confected puff. So kvetching about four women playing these roles instead of men seemed tremendously trivial to her.
I guess I'd normally say people need to grow up, but these are grownups screaming this stuff on the internet, losing their shit so to speak. While I'm no fan of the kind of social justice warrior brand of feminism, the casting of these actors is hardly that kind of feminism. I guess there are a lot of white male egos out there feeling they're losing their entitlement and need to fight over every bit of turf they can find. But it's asinine. It really is.
Diversity? Uh-huh
Way back when, the Ghostbusters were 3 white guys and a black guy and it felt like a solid step towards diversity. This time it's three white women and a black woman and it feels natural, but it also feels like it's not diverse enough. I guess times change and Hollywood is sometimes behind its own curve.
Also, the black woman played by Leslie Jones comes from blue collar Queens. As realistic as it might seem to some people (it's a kind of crappy realism that saps joy), I would've preferred it if she were the one who was the dedicated ghost researcher (Melissa McCarthy's role), and Erin's old friend. In turn if McCarthy played the engineer, it would have been funnier; and if Kate McKinnon played the girl from Queens working for the MTA, it might have been sharper. Of course the star-billing wouldn't have allowed for that construction, so it's a pipe dream. Instead we're stuck with the stereotyping of the Leslie Jones as coming from a blue collar background which kinda sucks and undercuts the argument it is in favour of the diversity it is implying.
Was This Worth Doing?
I'm torn about this one. Was the original so good it needed to be left alone? Probably not. Was it so bad it needed to be brought up to ate? Probably not. Both of the 80s instalments were middlingly okay films. Not that I believe in giving star ratings, but they were 3.5-out-of-5 sort of films. Hollywood is overflowing with 3.5 stars sort of films partly because they don't want to do much better lest it raise the bar too high, and go over people's heads.
To then make this film and it too hit about 3.5 stars, makes you wonder if the world really needed another 3.5 stars movie let alone another 3.5 Ghostbusters movie. One side of me says, "hell why not? More the merrier and what else were they going to do?" ...and yet another side says "Surely there's something better for this talent to be deployed."
I don't know. It's actually quite hard.
Charisma Is A Funny Thing
Stars are what movie execs pay big big big money for, exactly because they're the people with the charisma to keep the audience watching. Both Wiig and McCarthy are charismatic enough to carry the film, but the film gets eaten alive by Chris Hemsworth's Kevin anytime he's on screen interacting with the characters. Part of it is that Hemsworth's already saved New York City once in 'Avengers', so anytime the threat of the ghosts looms over New York City and Kevin is nonchalant and stupid, it's like an in-joke about Hemsworth actually being Thor. Yet the more significant part of it is that his star power is overpowering, so much so he takes over the end title sequence.
Equally, Bill Murray is on screen for all of three minutes, but you just keep wanting more of the guy. Andy Garcia plays the mayor and he too is on screen for 4 scenes. You want more of the guy, but he's gone. It's a pretty strange film that way.
2016/10/13
Listening To...
Old School Habits
Here are some CDs I scored. Yes, that's right CDs. Not stuff I stream, or got as mp3s or whatever people do these days to procure music. I'm a creature of habit and lately I've been back in shops buying discs. There's a lot I can say about this regression to old habits but it comes down to wanting-that-disc-god-damn-it, and that part of me isn't quite dead by the looks of things.
Sonik Kicks - Paul Weller.
This one is actually really upbeat and punchy. It was also only $4.99 at JB Hi-Fi, which is a steal. I mean really, 14 tracks of really well crafted songs by the Mod Father himself. What's the world come to?
10cc. The Greatest Hits ...And More - 10cc
I was after the more obscure cuts on the second disc. They really were the master of studio work so it bears listening to over and over again. They're so smooth in delivery and deft in execution, it's always worth going back for a quick revision. Plus the sheer sonic majesty of 'I'm not In Love' is still astounding to this day.
This Is Not The End - Baby Animals
The apotheosis to the apotheosis of Aussie rock. Truly, once upon a long ago they were pure-and-athentic Gen-X rockers but they got short shrift in a marketplace more interested in pushing Nirvana and grunge. I could write a whole lot more about them, but it's basically Suze DeMarchi and Dave Leslie with a new rhythm section here. 3 albums in total is not enough, when I cast mind to it. On the bright side, Suze DeMarchi hasn't shredded out her vocal cords so she sounds as good as she did on the first 2 albums way back when. And David Leslie is a guitar god.
A Box Set of Thelonious Monk
For $29.99 you get 'In Italy','At the Blackhawk', 'Brilliant Corners', 'The Unique Thelonious Monk', 'Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington'. I already owned the Ellington one and the Italy one so I got the set for the middle 3 discs. It's a lot of great stuff for not much money. Once again, what's the world come to?
Look, Monk clearly isn't to everybody's taste. But if you like your music interesting and not bland, you can't go past him.
Here are some CDs I scored. Yes, that's right CDs. Not stuff I stream, or got as mp3s or whatever people do these days to procure music. I'm a creature of habit and lately I've been back in shops buying discs. There's a lot I can say about this regression to old habits but it comes down to wanting-that-disc-god-damn-it, and that part of me isn't quite dead by the looks of things.
This one is actually really upbeat and punchy. It was also only $4.99 at JB Hi-Fi, which is a steal. I mean really, 14 tracks of really well crafted songs by the Mod Father himself. What's the world come to?
I was after the more obscure cuts on the second disc. They really were the master of studio work so it bears listening to over and over again. They're so smooth in delivery and deft in execution, it's always worth going back for a quick revision. Plus the sheer sonic majesty of 'I'm not In Love' is still astounding to this day.
The apotheosis to the apotheosis of Aussie rock. Truly, once upon a long ago they were pure-and-athentic Gen-X rockers but they got short shrift in a marketplace more interested in pushing Nirvana and grunge. I could write a whole lot more about them, but it's basically Suze DeMarchi and Dave Leslie with a new rhythm section here. 3 albums in total is not enough, when I cast mind to it. On the bright side, Suze DeMarchi hasn't shredded out her vocal cords so she sounds as good as she did on the first 2 albums way back when. And David Leslie is a guitar god.
For $29.99 you get 'In Italy','At the Blackhawk', 'Brilliant Corners', 'The Unique Thelonious Monk', 'Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington'. I already owned the Ellington one and the Italy one so I got the set for the middle 3 discs. It's a lot of great stuff for not much money. Once again, what's the world come to?
Look, Monk clearly isn't to everybody's taste. But if you like your music interesting and not bland, you can't go past him.
2016/10/12
Not A Circus, A Dumpster Fire
Can It End Now Please?
Well, the second debate came and went and it was divisive and crazy. I can't believe that there are people who thought Trump was a good idea when he was labelling Mexicans rapists, denigrating the disabled, accepting support from Ku Klux Klan members, and all the other crazy antics like the 3am tweets, abusing a Miss Universe contestant (a woman he once defended no less) - and then turning around to abandon Trump because he talks incredibly disrespectful-dirty shit when he thinks nobody's recording. It's actually hard to tell if that's worse than continuing to support the man in spite of all the crazy plus the leaked audio. At least sticking with the man shows loyalty. If they're abandoning him now after this recent scandal, then it's really hard to understand what exactly they stand for but that they draw the line at white women. Which is fine, but it's no endorsement of these people's character, because if one was willing to line up with the lunatic extremist and populist that is Trump while ignoring all the signs that he was a contemptuous human being full of bile, resentment, class entitlement, race entitlement and gender entitlement, it doesn't say much for one's judgement or character, does it?
That's all on the one side which is hellaciously awful.
But giving the Clintons a pass because Hillary isn't Bill is disingenuous; the Clinton Foundation and its inner workings would be problematic tif Bill and Chelsea were to remain part of it, and you'd think the American public would wonder out loud if having Bill back in the White House as a househusband on the loose was really what America wants. Is Bill a reformed philanderer or a better philanderer at covering his tracks? Not that it really matters where he sticks his genitals but last time he was in the White House he made a spectacular job of making it the world's business. If Hillary is in the White House, it stands to reason she brings with her the baggage of the first Clinton presidency. Will the more serious questions like the dismantling of the Glass-Steagle Act be revisited? Can Hillary reinstate it without damaging Bill's legacy? Highly unlikely; and if not, then is this a decent candidate to be having? What about all those leaked memos over at Wikileaks confirming she' a hawk and wants to go boots and all into war over Syria? Is that even safe?
The only reason she looks reasonable is because her opponent is Donald Trump, Man of Abject Intellectual Misery. A pile of hot steaming shit on a plate next to a poisoned pizza can make the poisoned pizza look like the palatable option.
It is an utter failure on the part of the Republicans that they couldn't come up with single credible candidate to face Clinton this year. The irony is that her toughest opponent was Bernie Sanders in the primaries. All this speaks volumes to the credibility loss trickle-down economics and globalisation and all these other Reaganomic claptrap economics has suffered. It also underlines the intellectual failure of the neo-con framework for government and the fact that the Republicans could not repel the insurrection from the right bodes ill for its future. I guess the problem now is what is going to replace it. If the Tea Party was an early harbinger of the shitstorm to come, then maybe we shouldn't be hoping for the demise of the Republican Party.
I do pity the American electorate. Neither candidate is exactly enticing. One is a disaster, while the other proves the failure of American politics through her victory - which is pyrrhic to say the least. Yet by extension of her powers, American politics affects us all, and so it is that this tragedy belongs to us all.
Well, the second debate came and went and it was divisive and crazy. I can't believe that there are people who thought Trump was a good idea when he was labelling Mexicans rapists, denigrating the disabled, accepting support from Ku Klux Klan members, and all the other crazy antics like the 3am tweets, abusing a Miss Universe contestant (a woman he once defended no less) - and then turning around to abandon Trump because he talks incredibly disrespectful-dirty shit when he thinks nobody's recording. It's actually hard to tell if that's worse than continuing to support the man in spite of all the crazy plus the leaked audio. At least sticking with the man shows loyalty. If they're abandoning him now after this recent scandal, then it's really hard to understand what exactly they stand for but that they draw the line at white women. Which is fine, but it's no endorsement of these people's character, because if one was willing to line up with the lunatic extremist and populist that is Trump while ignoring all the signs that he was a contemptuous human being full of bile, resentment, class entitlement, race entitlement and gender entitlement, it doesn't say much for one's judgement or character, does it?
That's all on the one side which is hellaciously awful.
But giving the Clintons a pass because Hillary isn't Bill is disingenuous; the Clinton Foundation and its inner workings would be problematic tif Bill and Chelsea were to remain part of it, and you'd think the American public would wonder out loud if having Bill back in the White House as a househusband on the loose was really what America wants. Is Bill a reformed philanderer or a better philanderer at covering his tracks? Not that it really matters where he sticks his genitals but last time he was in the White House he made a spectacular job of making it the world's business. If Hillary is in the White House, it stands to reason she brings with her the baggage of the first Clinton presidency. Will the more serious questions like the dismantling of the Glass-Steagle Act be revisited? Can Hillary reinstate it without damaging Bill's legacy? Highly unlikely; and if not, then is this a decent candidate to be having? What about all those leaked memos over at Wikileaks confirming she' a hawk and wants to go boots and all into war over Syria? Is that even safe?
The only reason she looks reasonable is because her opponent is Donald Trump, Man of Abject Intellectual Misery. A pile of hot steaming shit on a plate next to a poisoned pizza can make the poisoned pizza look like the palatable option.
It is an utter failure on the part of the Republicans that they couldn't come up with single credible candidate to face Clinton this year. The irony is that her toughest opponent was Bernie Sanders in the primaries. All this speaks volumes to the credibility loss trickle-down economics and globalisation and all these other Reaganomic claptrap economics has suffered. It also underlines the intellectual failure of the neo-con framework for government and the fact that the Republicans could not repel the insurrection from the right bodes ill for its future. I guess the problem now is what is going to replace it. If the Tea Party was an early harbinger of the shitstorm to come, then maybe we shouldn't be hoping for the demise of the Republican Party.
I do pity the American electorate. Neither candidate is exactly enticing. One is a disaster, while the other proves the failure of American politics through her victory - which is pyrrhic to say the least. Yet by extension of her powers, American politics affects us all, and so it is that this tragedy belongs to us all.
2016/10/10
Is It An Election Or A Circus?
One Of The Most Disturbing Things
By this time all of you with a connection to the internet should know that Donald Trump took a big hit last week, when a 2005 recording was released wherein he displayed the most misogynistic frat-boy sensibility we all suspected he had. In fact if you didn't suspect it or felt compelled to defend it, it probably meant you had it as well. Since then his polls have plummeted, and it's been such a meltdown in the media about it. Republicans who once offered their support to the Donald are now withdrawing it; some are even calling for him to pull out. It's all looking a bit untenable for the Donald.
President Obama has said:
The more interesting thing this week is that Donald Trump's 2005 leaked audio has become something of an enabling cipher for our politicians to discus the American election - something that politicians rightfully avoid doing.
A World With POTUS Trump
Peter Hartcher has this article:
Peter Hartcher is so disturbed by this, he wrote a further comment piece on the same topic:
Yeah, it's a problem.
Populism And The Politics Of Blame-Throwing
As with Australia, you do wonder how in the hell America got to where they are now. After all, if Pauline Hanson is back, and she's sort of okay with Donald Trump, you know he's appealing to the demographic of wilful ignorance and cranks. That there are so many of them attests to the 'success' of conservative governments who tried to create a populace more prone to populist arguments by degrading the quality of public education.
In ever way possible, the Donald Trump candidacy is a symptom of the anti-intellectual malaise thetas endemic amongst the conservatives. What the Republicans didn't count on was for the election to be hijacked by a reality show host who understood the schema of democracy's prime election as nothing but a popularity contest; And this, was essentially made possible by the very education-deprive populace the conservatives helped neglect - not nurture - who decided to choose the person who made the show more interesting.
The impact of Reality TV in the last 15years has been devastating. It's no coincidence that Pauline Hanson herself was a contestant on dancing with the stars. If one thing these shows have taught the populace, it is the entertainment to be had by having fractious, conflict-generating individuals on the show to stay longer. Donald Trump himself understands this very well, and so went about the primaries behaving more like a boor than a candidate, and still managed to win because he drew upon the votes who understood this dynamic the most. If the Republicans didn't see this coming, that would be because they were complaining about a black man being in the White House a little too much. It would appear their neurosis was entirely misplaced.
By this time all of you with a connection to the internet should know that Donald Trump took a big hit last week, when a 2005 recording was released wherein he displayed the most misogynistic frat-boy sensibility we all suspected he had. In fact if you didn't suspect it or felt compelled to defend it, it probably meant you had it as well. Since then his polls have plummeted, and it's been such a meltdown in the media about it. Republicans who once offered their support to the Donald are now withdrawing it; some are even calling for him to pull out. It's all looking a bit untenable for the Donald.
President Obama has said:
"One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming at the top of the Republican ticket,"... which pretty much sums it up. If you thought Mitt Romney giving a speech about the 47% of Americans being freeloaders was damning, this bit of audio consigns Trump to the ranks of those who truly did not deserve to run.
"I don't need to repeat it. There are children in the room."
The more interesting thing this week is that Donald Trump's 2005 leaked audio has become something of an enabling cipher for our politicians to discus the American election - something that politicians rightfully avoid doing.
A handful of Australian politicians have now expressed their opinions on the Trump scandal ahead of the second presidential debate.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull labelled Trump's comments "loathsome" and said they deserved the "absolutely universal condemnation that they have received".
Minister for Women Michaelia Cash said Mr Trump's comments were "demeaning, they were disappointing and they were wrong, full stop".
Deputy Prime Minister Barnarby Joyce, while labelling Mr Trump's comments as unacceptable, criticised both the Democrats and Republicans for digging up rubbish from each other's past.
"I just think this whole debate in the United States is turning into a dirty, filthy concoction which belies the respect the American people deserve," he told ABC radio.It's not just a bunch of nobodies saying this stuff in the press, and that's a little surprising.
"They're all digging up rubbish from each other's past and I just think the whole thing is pretty unsavoury."
Regular sparring partners Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch, two of the most outspoken crossbench senators, have exchanged heated words in the hallways of Parliament House about Trump's attitudes to women.
Fairfax Media's political reporter Fergus Hunter reports that the spat, caught on camera, followed a television interview where the pair were asked about whether Trump should quit the race for the White House.
As the pair left the television studio and walked on to their next Parliament House engagements, Senator Hinch pursued his Senate colleague over her attitude.
"That you, as a woman, could even make any justification for what he has said and what he has done is just ...," he said.
"Well, I didn't condone what he said," responded Senator Hanson.
"No, you said the people of America will decide. If you are even slightly right, then God help the country and God help the world. The man is a sexual predator and he is a disgrace," the former broadcaster said, before getting a lift.Great Googly-moogly. One can only imagine the rest of that conversation. On the one hand you have the crank Pauline Hanson tacitly trying to continue support for the unsupportable Trump, and on the other side you have a shock-jock-turned-pollie looking for some moral high ground; The two of them arguing over a candidate whose approach to elections was to turn it into a reality show. You can't come up with this stuff.
Australian Labor senator Doug Cameron doubts there will be a Trump presidency.
"Why would any woman in America vote for Trump?" he asked.
"The sooner he's defeated, or the sooner he gives in the better."
New Labor MP Emma Husar said Australia would work with whoever was elected, but called Trump a "pig".
"He's an absolute repugnant animal who deserves to have every single Republican who is well-respected over there walk away from him," she told reporters.You know, in the days not so long ago, our politicians would have refrained from saying stuff like this. What the hell is Senator Hussar going to do should the Donald pull out an unlikely win and visit Australia? Hide? Apologise? Yes the Donald is a terrible human being, but is it that necessary for a Senator in Australia to be hammering in nails of his political coffin when others inches own country are doing a perfectly good job? It actually doesn't say anything good about our polity. If lack of restraint is Donald Trump's problem, then our politicians could have done better showing that very same restraint.
A World With POTUS Trump
Peter Hartcher has this article:
The US under a President Trump would withdraw Australia's security guarantee and become a "rogue superpower", according to a scholarly analysis commissioned by Australia's Lowy Institute.
The results would be so dire that the US election is the most consequential for world order since World War II, and the most consequential for the US since the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the report says.
"For the first time one of the two major party nominees for the presidency, Donald Trump, is campaigning on a platform of weakening the core elements of the international order, including the US alliance system and an open global economy," concludes Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution in Washington.
He says Australia's alliance with the US would suffer directly as a result.
The Republican candidate has said he'd be prepared to re-negotiate or abandon US alliances with Japan, South Korea and NATO, but has not specifically mentioned Australia.
"Honestly, I think you are probably in the same category" as those US allies, Dr Wright told Fairfax Media. "He just hasn't been asked.It's a genuinely scary world where Trump's in charge. There's not a lot of conversation about it in Australia, but there's quite a bit of it in Japan where they've budgeted the possibility of a complete US Withdrawal, and just how much money would have to be spent by Japan to fill that vacuum. In short, Japan would have to re-arm in a way that would bring back a proper military. A Trump-led US pull out to from Japan and Okinawa will necessitate Japan return to being a military power. Presumably the same would apply for Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Not only would that be a more dangerous world, it would be more expensive in a time when governments don't have money.
Peter Hartcher is so disturbed by this, he wrote a further comment piece on the same topic:
In trying to make believe that Donald Trump is not as dangerous as he promises to be, millions of people have resorted to denialism.
On three levels.
First, that he could not possibly win. This remains in the hands of events, of course. But even after he was exposed boasting of sexually assaulting women, US betting odds on Sunday gave him one chance in five of taking the presidency.
Two, that he could not possibly be serious about the things he's said. He does enjoy being outrageous. And on many issues he has had more positions than a yoga instructor.
(edit)
The third and final level of denialism is that even if he's elected and even if he tried to press ahead with his policies, the American system would stop him.
Wright agrees that Trump would be frustrated on domestic initiatives by the Congress or Supreme Court.
But on his foreign policy ideas? Wright's analysis paper, to be published by the Lowy Institute on Monday, says: "He will have a freer hand internationally. There is no body or law that can prevent him from aligning himself with Putin, ignoring an ally, or shaking things up with a far-reaching foreign policy statement. And, as we have seen, grievance against the rest of the world is not just a part of Trump's ideology, it is at its very core."Well that's all well and good, but our country has very little sway over the electoral outcome in the USA. So denialism or not, there's solid chance that Donald Trump might still survive this round of scandals and end up POTUS and unleash fresh hell. Should that happen, those Australian politicians who slammed him are going to look really dumb for having done so.
Denialism is no defence. Trump, even now, is possible. He's serious, and some of his most dangerous ideas could become real.
Yeah, it's a problem.
Populism And The Politics Of Blame-Throwing
As with Australia, you do wonder how in the hell America got to where they are now. After all, if Pauline Hanson is back, and she's sort of okay with Donald Trump, you know he's appealing to the demographic of wilful ignorance and cranks. That there are so many of them attests to the 'success' of conservative governments who tried to create a populace more prone to populist arguments by degrading the quality of public education.
In ever way possible, the Donald Trump candidacy is a symptom of the anti-intellectual malaise thetas endemic amongst the conservatives. What the Republicans didn't count on was for the election to be hijacked by a reality show host who understood the schema of democracy's prime election as nothing but a popularity contest; And this, was essentially made possible by the very education-deprive populace the conservatives helped neglect - not nurture - who decided to choose the person who made the show more interesting.
The impact of Reality TV in the last 15years has been devastating. It's no coincidence that Pauline Hanson herself was a contestant on dancing with the stars. If one thing these shows have taught the populace, it is the entertainment to be had by having fractious, conflict-generating individuals on the show to stay longer. Donald Trump himself understands this very well, and so went about the primaries behaving more like a boor than a candidate, and still managed to win because he drew upon the votes who understood this dynamic the most. If the Republicans didn't see this coming, that would be because they were complaining about a black man being in the White House a little too much. It would appear their neurosis was entirely misplaced.
2016/10/07
News That's Fit To Punt - 7/Oct/2016
Ross Higgins (1931 -2016)
The only thing I know Ross Higgins from was that execrable show 'Kingswood Country'. 'Kingswood Country' loomed over the early1980s like a cloud of politically incorrect humour disguised as witticisms. As Ted Bullpitt, Ross Higgins was the star of the show that ostensibly poked fun at the suburbanite with a narrow mind. The problem was that if you lived in the suburbs back then, you were surrounded by people who took it as validation of their politically incorrect positions.
I'm not entirely sure where Ross Higgins stood in relationship to his creation; there was an element where the character was much larger than the show so Higgins ended up plugging insecticide in his Ted Bullpitt persona. One thing that was clear that I could see was that Ted Bullpitt crystallised a certain kind of cultural posture in Australia that goes around bullying migrants.
In the case of St Ives High School where I was in 1980, it manifested itself as a massive bullying of a kid in the year above me, who was from Chile. Yes, in St. Ives, that was the closest thing the local orcs could find to calling a 'bloody wog'. The bullying was merciless and pretty much out of control on the school bus, outside of the school grounds where the teachers could not see.
It was one of the most unfair treatments of a fellow student I have ever seen - and believe me, until 6months before then, I'd been living in New York City. If this was racism, I'd never seen anything so fierce and awful; and if this was xenophobia I'd never seen anything so hostile and full of hate. Ted Bullpitt wasn't inciting the hated, that much is true. The problem was that the weekly does of Ted Bullpitt on TV was legitimating this hideous bullying through validating this persona. It gave kids licence to be as vile and horrid. It was no joke, it was more identity politics gone completely wrong.
So the two things I've never really forgiven are St. Ives High School and 'Kingswood Country'. As for Ross Higgins, I'll never really know.
Selling The Poles
What might pass for the Coalition Government's Anti-Arts Anti-Sports policy, a Coalition Senator wants to investigate cutting all government funding to sport and the arts, as well as selling off 'Blue Poles'.
There's at the famous story of some ministers wanting to cut arts funding in the UK during World War II and Winston Churchill responding "then why are we fighting this war?" Surely somewhere in the dim dark past the conservatives were for the arts. It's only because they hated the counter-culture so much in the 1960s that they've alienated themselves from the arts and by extension cultural undertakings in this country. There's a reason why there are so many philistines walking around Australia; it's because the Coalition has worked very hard to create them so that they can vote for the Coalition. It shouldn't surprise us that with the absolute dearth of brain power going towards the right that the best they can throw up is a 28 year old Senator with the mind of a philistine, a body of a philistine, but not the same philistine.
It gets worse:
Funny that. If you're going to complain about a work of art hanging in the National ArtGallery not being Australian, you might want to invest in Australian artists a bit more not less. You know, through arts fundings, through state organs like the Australia Council. (God, I don't think I can do this much longer, pointing out the logical inconsistencies of an intellectually deficient government. I really ought to quit.)
There are people who would love it that the government funding for the Arts was in the order of $40 billion, and that it could be cut. Ah, would that it were so simple.
"'T'werrrrr." That we do elect such imbeciles says a lot about our polity; but then so do all the other things this government does and says.
The only thing I know Ross Higgins from was that execrable show 'Kingswood Country'. 'Kingswood Country' loomed over the early1980s like a cloud of politically incorrect humour disguised as witticisms. As Ted Bullpitt, Ross Higgins was the star of the show that ostensibly poked fun at the suburbanite with a narrow mind. The problem was that if you lived in the suburbs back then, you were surrounded by people who took it as validation of their politically incorrect positions.
I'm not entirely sure where Ross Higgins stood in relationship to his creation; there was an element where the character was much larger than the show so Higgins ended up plugging insecticide in his Ted Bullpitt persona. One thing that was clear that I could see was that Ted Bullpitt crystallised a certain kind of cultural posture in Australia that goes around bullying migrants.
In the case of St Ives High School where I was in 1980, it manifested itself as a massive bullying of a kid in the year above me, who was from Chile. Yes, in St. Ives, that was the closest thing the local orcs could find to calling a 'bloody wog'. The bullying was merciless and pretty much out of control on the school bus, outside of the school grounds where the teachers could not see.
It was one of the most unfair treatments of a fellow student I have ever seen - and believe me, until 6months before then, I'd been living in New York City. If this was racism, I'd never seen anything so fierce and awful; and if this was xenophobia I'd never seen anything so hostile and full of hate. Ted Bullpitt wasn't inciting the hated, that much is true. The problem was that the weekly does of Ted Bullpitt on TV was legitimating this hideous bullying through validating this persona. It gave kids licence to be as vile and horrid. It was no joke, it was more identity politics gone completely wrong.
So the two things I've never really forgiven are St. Ives High School and 'Kingswood Country'. As for Ross Higgins, I'll never really know.
Selling The Poles
What might pass for the Coalition Government's Anti-Arts Anti-Sports policy, a Coalition Senator wants to investigate cutting all government funding to sport and the arts, as well as selling off 'Blue Poles'.
The firesale was necessary to fix Australia's bloated budget deficit, he argued – although the $350 million painting represents only about 0.07 per cent of the country's $470 billion gross national debt.
Appearing on Melbourne's 3AW radio with Neil Mitchell, Senator Paterson was asked where the belt-tightening would end.
"Why do we fund $7 billion a year into the arts and who knows how many billions into sport?" Mitchell asked. "Maybe we reassess and say let's fix some grassroots problems and forget about sport and the arts?"
"I agree, Neil," Senator Paterson replied. "$39 billion deficit last year. It's not a time when we can really be affording luxury. We've got to look at all areas of spending.
"I find it difficult to understand why Australia is so generous when it comes to professional sport. Given that there's a lot of private funding for professional sport, I don't think it's really necessary for us to be funding it from our taxes."
Senator Paterson also volunteered Australia Post as "the next cab off the rank" for full privatisation, but drew the line at junking the $200 million same-sex marriage plebiscite to save money. "It's something we took to the election," he said.It's sort of funny when you consider the Liberal Government in NSW wants to sell off the electricity poles, there might be some Freudian meme in there somewhere.
There's at the famous story of some ministers wanting to cut arts funding in the UK during World War II and Winston Churchill responding "then why are we fighting this war?" Surely somewhere in the dim dark past the conservatives were for the arts. It's only because they hated the counter-culture so much in the 1960s that they've alienated themselves from the arts and by extension cultural undertakings in this country. There's a reason why there are so many philistines walking around Australia; it's because the Coalition has worked very hard to create them so that they can vote for the Coalition. It shouldn't surprise us that with the absolute dearth of brain power going towards the right that the best they can throw up is a 28 year old Senator with the mind of a philistine, a body of a philistine, but not the same philistine.
It gets worse:
Speaking to Fairfax Media later, Senator Paterson declined to go into further detail about axing funding for sport and the arts. "One privatisation a day is enough," he said, clarifying that he was making "a general philosophical point" about the use of taxpayers' money.
"When you've got a $40 billion budget deficit, every item of spending needs to be scrutinised more closely," he said. "Let's fight that battle once I've got Blue Poles privatised - uh, sold."
Senator Paterson said former prime minister John Howard and former treasurer Peter Costello exemplified debt reduction strategies because they mixed structural budget repair with privatisation, such as the sale of Telstra.
"They would not have been able to pay back the debt with just one or the other. You have to do a bit of everything," he said.
His main objection to Blue Poles was that it was an American artwork with little cultural value here. "It's a great painting and it's had a huge impact on the art world, but it's not Australian," he told 3AW.
Funny that. If you're going to complain about a work of art hanging in the National ArtGallery not being Australian, you might want to invest in Australian artists a bit more not less. You know, through arts fundings, through state organs like the Australia Council. (God, I don't think I can do this much longer, pointing out the logical inconsistencies of an intellectually deficient government. I really ought to quit.)
There are people who would love it that the government funding for the Arts was in the order of $40 billion, and that it could be cut. Ah, would that it were so simple.
"'T'werrrrr." That we do elect such imbeciles says a lot about our polity; but then so do all the other things this government does and says.
2016/10/04
More On That Intellectual Bankruptcy
Here's An Example!
Right on cue, here's an article by Tom Switzer that illustrates my point.
When the so-called 'Coalition of the Willing' invaded Iraq in 2003, it did so without a sign off from the UN Security Council. You might recall Collin Powell getting up and showing aerial reconnaissance photographs which purported showing Iraqis shuttling trucks loaded with Weapons of Mass Destruction. The UN did not say, "sure go ahead", they said, "no".
The point is, the 'Coalition of the Willing' invaded Iraq unilaterally, and for that John Howard has to wear the responsibility of co-authoring that disastrous move - a move so disastrous we're still reaping the poisoned fruits of those labours. This side of 1945, we do have an understanding that world leaders who unilaterally invade countries (no matter the goodness of intentions) are up for war crimes.
And as stupid as it is to repeat this here, this is why there is a legitimate argument to be made that George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are war criminals by the very same ruler we use to measure such diverse people as Herman Goering, Hideki Tojo, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, and whoever else tinpot dictators in Africa we don't like. This accusation is expressly not, "cheapening of moral language" as Switzer argues; merely a logical ramification of the legal logic cast upon these other people like Herman Goering, Hideki Tojo, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic et al. To argue otherwise is an attempt to create one set of rules for the people in history we dislike, and another set of rules for leaders of English speaking nations to suit Tom Switzer's bit of sophistry.
As of the findings of the Chilcott Report earlier this year, it is no longer tenable to give the benefit of the doubt to GeorgeW. Bush and Tony Blair for their so-called "good intentions". To argue that Saddam Hussein had it coming - sans proper trial at the Hague which he did not get - and therefore his misdeeds justified the Iraq War, flies in the face of the principle of having War Criminals. If you think Saddam being Saddam justified the 2003 invasion, you're arguing that any nation can go invade another if it can form its own coalition of willing countries to participate because might and majority make their own right.
Clearly we in the Western World do not go by this thinking, and this is also why the world has such an elaborate institution as the United Nations with its Security Council to forestall such free-for-alls. You just can't have it both ways where Saddam is a War Criminal and George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are not War Criminals, if you believe in the moral language of having war criminals in the first place. That leaves the legal defence of John Howard to the possibility that he was not part of the criminal conspiracy perpetrated by Bush and Blair, but merely a tag-along. That would make him a dangerous adventurer, which is no more admirable than a "War Criminal".
The thing that gets me is that all of this is simply logic. It's not a philosophical issue at all.It's simply the logic constructed by the types of conservatives in the past - like Winston Churchill - thought up with all this legal logic. The history altering event of 2003 was that the self-appointed leaders of the free world would throw reason together with caution to the wind and go rampaging into Iraq. To pretend otherwise is so intellectually deficient and dishonest it makes you wonder how the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald doesn't balk at it (yes you Darren Goodsir).
Anyway... Switzer decides to give himself a pat on the back - a bit unseemly but what the heck - and then goes on to say:
He's dead wrong.
On top of which, if that were the case, then he is once again arguing that Saddam had it coming, and that's good enough for him - but heaven forbid those who would argue on principle that the invasion of Iraq was a war crime. That's the height of hypocrisy.
Then there's this bit...
As it is, his tacit non-condemntion of One Nation in 1996 only entrenched the view that he was still a racist, even after his alleged detente with the Chinese community. There is no way known you could argue John Howard was not a racist politician. Malcolm Turnbull can praise Howard for a multi-cultural Australia all he likes, but he'd be dead wrong too - it simply wasn't the way that historic discussion went. Once again, it is intellectually dishonest for Tom Switzer to present John Howard as this amazing champion of multiculturalism in Australia. He can try it on, but it's called lying.
And this is what we have as conservative commentary. Two bits of sophistry combined with moral outrage about the "moral language" ("egadz!") and an outright attempt to rewrite the track record of a man who was an unpleasant racialist politician, if not an outright racist individual.
John Howard richly deserves the opprobrium heaped upon him. That the University of Sydney with its crappy regressive culture would want to honour John Howard with an honorary doctorate is their business. In my books, nothing is beneath them. If Switzer thinks John Howard is so deserving of this honour, that's also his business. However, complaining about those who would object to this conferring of social capital is a bit rich. The public record is what it is; John Howard knows what he did; Switzer knows what he did; we all know what Howard did. Let's not pretend for a moment that it's not contentious to hand this man an honorary doctorate and praise him. It's this kind of game-playing sophistry and hypocrisy that makes the conservatives look so intellectually vacant in this country. If Tom Switzer is the leading light of these conservative thinkers, then they've really got a problem.
Just saying.
Right on cue, here's an article by Tom Switzer that illustrates my point.
It should be obvious to even primary school students that a war criminal is someone who has actually committed a war crime. More to the point, to equate a democratic leader who supported the toppling of a brutal dictatorship with the likes of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge is a cheapening of moral language.
One could oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and still believe that Howard, like Tony Blair and George W. Bush, was motivated by good intentions. Saddam Hussein, after all, was a murderous despot who had invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 and subsequently defied about 17 United Nations resolutions. He also used chemical weapons in the murder of tens of thousands of Kurds in the north and the Shiites of southern Iraq.Where do you start? Let's do this in order.
When the so-called 'Coalition of the Willing' invaded Iraq in 2003, it did so without a sign off from the UN Security Council. You might recall Collin Powell getting up and showing aerial reconnaissance photographs which purported showing Iraqis shuttling trucks loaded with Weapons of Mass Destruction. The UN did not say, "sure go ahead", they said, "no".
The point is, the 'Coalition of the Willing' invaded Iraq unilaterally, and for that John Howard has to wear the responsibility of co-authoring that disastrous move - a move so disastrous we're still reaping the poisoned fruits of those labours. This side of 1945, we do have an understanding that world leaders who unilaterally invade countries (no matter the goodness of intentions) are up for war crimes.
And as stupid as it is to repeat this here, this is why there is a legitimate argument to be made that George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are war criminals by the very same ruler we use to measure such diverse people as Herman Goering, Hideki Tojo, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, and whoever else tinpot dictators in Africa we don't like. This accusation is expressly not, "cheapening of moral language" as Switzer argues; merely a logical ramification of the legal logic cast upon these other people like Herman Goering, Hideki Tojo, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic et al. To argue otherwise is an attempt to create one set of rules for the people in history we dislike, and another set of rules for leaders of English speaking nations to suit Tom Switzer's bit of sophistry.
As of the findings of the Chilcott Report earlier this year, it is no longer tenable to give the benefit of the doubt to GeorgeW. Bush and Tony Blair for their so-called "good intentions". To argue that Saddam Hussein had it coming - sans proper trial at the Hague which he did not get - and therefore his misdeeds justified the Iraq War, flies in the face of the principle of having War Criminals. If you think Saddam being Saddam justified the 2003 invasion, you're arguing that any nation can go invade another if it can form its own coalition of willing countries to participate because might and majority make their own right.
Clearly we in the Western World do not go by this thinking, and this is also why the world has such an elaborate institution as the United Nations with its Security Council to forestall such free-for-alls. You just can't have it both ways where Saddam is a War Criminal and George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are not War Criminals, if you believe in the moral language of having war criminals in the first place. That leaves the legal defence of John Howard to the possibility that he was not part of the criminal conspiracy perpetrated by Bush and Blair, but merely a tag-along. That would make him a dangerous adventurer, which is no more admirable than a "War Criminal".
The thing that gets me is that all of this is simply logic. It's not a philosophical issue at all.It's simply the logic constructed by the types of conservatives in the past - like Winston Churchill - thought up with all this legal logic. The history altering event of 2003 was that the self-appointed leaders of the free world would throw reason together with caution to the wind and go rampaging into Iraq. To pretend otherwise is so intellectually deficient and dishonest it makes you wonder how the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald doesn't balk at it (yes you Darren Goodsir).
Anyway... Switzer decides to give himself a pat on the back - a bit unseemly but what the heck - and then goes on to say:
What Howard failed to recognise, however, was the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Toppling Saddam, as many conservative realists (such as this writer and my friends Owen Harries and John Mearsheimer) warned at the time, was also fraught with the danger of unintended consequences.Good God. Conservative realists? Really? As opposed to ordinary realists who opposed the war on principle, the Conservative realists who opposed it on the basis of the difficulty of fulfilling the rest of the mission, once begun? If you are going to bang on the morality of language to begin with, you'd think you would argue things on the principle of it, but no. Tom Switzer wants to argue a technicality that the mission itself was difficult, and that's why it was wrong. Switzer is saying if the Iraq War worked out much cleaner, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
He's dead wrong.
On top of which, if that were the case, then he is once again arguing that Saddam had it coming, and that's good enough for him - but heaven forbid those who would argue on principle that the invasion of Iraq was a war crime. That's the height of hypocrisy.
Then there's this bit...
The objectors to the honorary doctorate also claim Howard was a racist. Never mind his post-Tampa asylum-seeker standoff policies boosted public confidence in our immigration and humanitarian refugee agenda. So much so that the rate of legal, non-discriminatory migration from four corners of the world, including Africa, doubled from 2002 to 2007. When Malcolm Turnbull praises Australia as the global role model for border protection, he is paying tribute to Howard (and his successor Tony Abbott).Look, John Howard landed himself in much trouble in the 1987 Federal election campaign when he said there were too many asian migrants. It took him a long time to rehabilitate his image, but those words were uttered and even in 1987, it was obvious that he was playing race politics to get ahead. That would make John Howard a racialist politician. If he is not one today, it may be because he's grown to be a better man since, but the John Howard of 1987 was rightfully spotted as a racist - and proud of it. These things are not going to get forgotten. If John Howard never wanted to wear the epithet, he should have had the good sense not to stoke those fires for a few votes more. Most famous people who are not racists, never get hung with the epithet. The fact that it landed on Howard speaks volumes.
As it is, his tacit non-condemntion of One Nation in 1996 only entrenched the view that he was still a racist, even after his alleged detente with the Chinese community. There is no way known you could argue John Howard was not a racist politician. Malcolm Turnbull can praise Howard for a multi-cultural Australia all he likes, but he'd be dead wrong too - it simply wasn't the way that historic discussion went. Once again, it is intellectually dishonest for Tom Switzer to present John Howard as this amazing champion of multiculturalism in Australia. He can try it on, but it's called lying.
And this is what we have as conservative commentary. Two bits of sophistry combined with moral outrage about the "moral language" ("egadz!") and an outright attempt to rewrite the track record of a man who was an unpleasant racialist politician, if not an outright racist individual.
John Howard richly deserves the opprobrium heaped upon him. That the University of Sydney with its crappy regressive culture would want to honour John Howard with an honorary doctorate is their business. In my books, nothing is beneath them. If Switzer thinks John Howard is so deserving of this honour, that's also his business. However, complaining about those who would object to this conferring of social capital is a bit rich. The public record is what it is; John Howard knows what he did; Switzer knows what he did; we all know what Howard did. Let's not pretend for a moment that it's not contentious to hand this man an honorary doctorate and praise him. It's this kind of game-playing sophistry and hypocrisy that makes the conservatives look so intellectually vacant in this country. If Tom Switzer is the leading light of these conservative thinkers, then they've really got a problem.
Just saying.
2016/10/03
View From The Couch - 04/Oct/2016
Democratised Nonsense
The whole marriage equality 'debate' is rather unfortunate. It's unfortunate in the sense that there really isn't any logical reason to deny marriage equality. The pseudo-arguments being mounted against it by the christian lobby and conservatives of this country are in most part spurious and idiotic, not even worthy of analysis except that we have to pretend to take it seriously for the sake of it looking like there's a debate.
I don't know about you, but I think this is a kind of intellectual malaise. It's the sort of regressive thinking that allows equal airtime to climate change deniers or extreme right wing nutbars who want to loosen the gun laws of this country. Yes democracy means canvassing all opinions but should the media work so hard to accommodate the unpalatable? Aren't the outlier opinions outlier opinions for a reason? Just as we don't let creationism sneak into science classes, we should not let idiotic ideas receive the spotlight.
Nonetheless the media is full of democratic niceness and gives platforms to these people in order to create more drama and tension where there need not ought to be. A sensible editorial position would be to not let climate change denial have a place in the national discourse. Allowing such topics oxygen subtracts from our polity, not strengthen it, and the inability of the media to discern such distinctions essentially has weakened our democracy.
Of course, a lot of this is harder to do in practice, and there will always be somebody who champions the democratic right of stupid opinions to be aired and disseminated widely, but they do so at the indulgence of better minds, and at the expense of better discourse. As for the plebiscite, it is clear that it is unworkable if it is not binding; and the current government will not make it binding because a significant portion know that a majority will vote in favour of it and that is something they would seek to deny. Given this situation where the government itself is committed to this anti-democratic parlour game, it is worth saying we should not entertain this idea of a plebiscite and we should just push for a vote in parliament instead.
Arguing Against History
It goes without saying that the victimhood posturing made by the Australia Christian Lobby is pretty pathetic. These are the people arguing against legalising gay marriage because doing so would take something away from Christian marriages. Hence the argument they can mount is that the symbolic loss on the part of Christian marriages is something for which the government and the law cannot compensate, and therefore it must be stopped. You know what? Just writing that sentence made my head hurt.
The core of the Christian Lobby's argument is that they don't want it because they don't want it, and all it takes is a little bit of digging to get to the homophobia that resides not too far from the surface of calls for 'religious freedom'. It's a compete and utter joke that this kind of thinking holding up a very simple process which, really should be no skin off tor collective noses, but they carry on as if this is some kind point of principle that cannot be altered. You sort of wonder why these charitable Christians can't find the same passion in protecting the human rights of asylum seekers or the homeless or the drug addicts and mentally ill of this world.
But no, they persist with the deranged notion that somehow this entitled whitbread middle-class is the victim in the process. Pardon me if you think I'm being harsh but this bullshit really ought not to be aired by the media as the counter-argument to marriage equality. It's not an argument, it's a statement of prejudice and an ancient and ugly one at that. (And that's coming from somebody who isn't gay.)
Who would have thought the problems of the Twenty-first Century involved shedding the prejudices of centuries prior to the Twentieth?
The Absence Of Critical Thought Amongst Conservatives
For close to a decade starting from the mid-2000s, we've seen the rise of the late BabyBoomer generation to the ranks of ministers in this country. The Coalition is still firmly in the hands of the Baby Boomers while the ALP has moved on to Gen-X as their front-bench. What is particularly notable about the conservative Baby Boomers is that they are the people who benefited the most from Whitlam making tertiary education free, and then went on to try and raise Tertiary education fees to unprecedented levels. Not only are their policies crap, they seem to be largely unaware of the perception in the community of them as eying the most entitled people putting a wrecking ball to the national consensus.
The fact that things have not improved under Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership is not very surprising given that the paucity of talent amongst the Liberals and Nationals. The paucity of talent is also unsurprising because the kinds of kids who signed up for young Liberals bacon campus were either spoilt brats from Private Schools who never really leaned anything and were protected their parents' money, or people so stupid to think ideology was a good substitute for doing one's own thinking.
Thus the ideologically motivated have become the front-and-centre face of conservatism, and worse still it's an un-reflective, ill-conceived ideology that is masquerading as something more effective than it actually is. This of course gives rise to a Treasurer like WTE Joe Hockey who announces an end to the age of entitlement and proceeds to cut welfare while cutting taxes for the rich. So far Scott Morrison is faring a little better in that he hasn't cut welfare as much as Hockey did, but he too is intent on giving the wealthy a tax-cut because he believes whole-heartedly in the laughable principle of trickle-down economics.It's enough to make you wonder what kind of education these people got - or perhaps what part of their expensive education they heard enough to take away, because there doesn't seem to be much logic or mathematics or economics or sociology involved.
The tremendous electoral success of the neo-liberal agenda based on Milton Friedman has sort of covered up the vast intellectual blackhole at the heart the neo-liberal project. It is no surprise then that after the GFC, the right has scrambled to find a way to explain away the colossal failure of the massively financialised economy and the global banking crisis it brought about. It is even pitiful that some have taken to Ayn Rand as their go-to thinker. It doesn't et more pathetic than that. Even today the reason the Turnbull government struggles to arrive at a compelling narrative is because it can't formulate one from a position of reason. It can only keep playing the ideological position statements as if they can substitute for actual thinking.
But The Problems Are Mounting
The truly compelling global problem is climate change. Somebody is going to have to pay to deal with it and it can't all be put on the general public nor the governments. It's going to have to come from the private sector. The rampant denialism notwithstanding, they're the facts. The added fact that our government can't bring itself to deal with those issues, and instead rolls around in the political mud trying to figure out how to get past marriage equality shows you just how feeble the minds of our politicians have become. Not only are we living in a time of catastrophic climate change, we're living in a time of catastrophic failure of intellect amongst our national leadership.
The whole marriage equality 'debate' is rather unfortunate. It's unfortunate in the sense that there really isn't any logical reason to deny marriage equality. The pseudo-arguments being mounted against it by the christian lobby and conservatives of this country are in most part spurious and idiotic, not even worthy of analysis except that we have to pretend to take it seriously for the sake of it looking like there's a debate.
I don't know about you, but I think this is a kind of intellectual malaise. It's the sort of regressive thinking that allows equal airtime to climate change deniers or extreme right wing nutbars who want to loosen the gun laws of this country. Yes democracy means canvassing all opinions but should the media work so hard to accommodate the unpalatable? Aren't the outlier opinions outlier opinions for a reason? Just as we don't let creationism sneak into science classes, we should not let idiotic ideas receive the spotlight.
Nonetheless the media is full of democratic niceness and gives platforms to these people in order to create more drama and tension where there need not ought to be. A sensible editorial position would be to not let climate change denial have a place in the national discourse. Allowing such topics oxygen subtracts from our polity, not strengthen it, and the inability of the media to discern such distinctions essentially has weakened our democracy.
Of course, a lot of this is harder to do in practice, and there will always be somebody who champions the democratic right of stupid opinions to be aired and disseminated widely, but they do so at the indulgence of better minds, and at the expense of better discourse. As for the plebiscite, it is clear that it is unworkable if it is not binding; and the current government will not make it binding because a significant portion know that a majority will vote in favour of it and that is something they would seek to deny. Given this situation where the government itself is committed to this anti-democratic parlour game, it is worth saying we should not entertain this idea of a plebiscite and we should just push for a vote in parliament instead.
Arguing Against History
It goes without saying that the victimhood posturing made by the Australia Christian Lobby is pretty pathetic. These are the people arguing against legalising gay marriage because doing so would take something away from Christian marriages. Hence the argument they can mount is that the symbolic loss on the part of Christian marriages is something for which the government and the law cannot compensate, and therefore it must be stopped. You know what? Just writing that sentence made my head hurt.
The core of the Christian Lobby's argument is that they don't want it because they don't want it, and all it takes is a little bit of digging to get to the homophobia that resides not too far from the surface of calls for 'religious freedom'. It's a compete and utter joke that this kind of thinking holding up a very simple process which, really should be no skin off tor collective noses, but they carry on as if this is some kind point of principle that cannot be altered. You sort of wonder why these charitable Christians can't find the same passion in protecting the human rights of asylum seekers or the homeless or the drug addicts and mentally ill of this world.
But no, they persist with the deranged notion that somehow this entitled whitbread middle-class is the victim in the process. Pardon me if you think I'm being harsh but this bullshit really ought not to be aired by the media as the counter-argument to marriage equality. It's not an argument, it's a statement of prejudice and an ancient and ugly one at that. (And that's coming from somebody who isn't gay.)
Who would have thought the problems of the Twenty-first Century involved shedding the prejudices of centuries prior to the Twentieth?
The Absence Of Critical Thought Amongst Conservatives
For close to a decade starting from the mid-2000s, we've seen the rise of the late BabyBoomer generation to the ranks of ministers in this country. The Coalition is still firmly in the hands of the Baby Boomers while the ALP has moved on to Gen-X as their front-bench. What is particularly notable about the conservative Baby Boomers is that they are the people who benefited the most from Whitlam making tertiary education free, and then went on to try and raise Tertiary education fees to unprecedented levels. Not only are their policies crap, they seem to be largely unaware of the perception in the community of them as eying the most entitled people putting a wrecking ball to the national consensus.
The fact that things have not improved under Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership is not very surprising given that the paucity of talent amongst the Liberals and Nationals. The paucity of talent is also unsurprising because the kinds of kids who signed up for young Liberals bacon campus were either spoilt brats from Private Schools who never really leaned anything and were protected their parents' money, or people so stupid to think ideology was a good substitute for doing one's own thinking.
Thus the ideologically motivated have become the front-and-centre face of conservatism, and worse still it's an un-reflective, ill-conceived ideology that is masquerading as something more effective than it actually is. This of course gives rise to a Treasurer like WTE Joe Hockey who announces an end to the age of entitlement and proceeds to cut welfare while cutting taxes for the rich. So far Scott Morrison is faring a little better in that he hasn't cut welfare as much as Hockey did, but he too is intent on giving the wealthy a tax-cut because he believes whole-heartedly in the laughable principle of trickle-down economics.It's enough to make you wonder what kind of education these people got - or perhaps what part of their expensive education they heard enough to take away, because there doesn't seem to be much logic or mathematics or economics or sociology involved.
The tremendous electoral success of the neo-liberal agenda based on Milton Friedman has sort of covered up the vast intellectual blackhole at the heart the neo-liberal project. It is no surprise then that after the GFC, the right has scrambled to find a way to explain away the colossal failure of the massively financialised economy and the global banking crisis it brought about. It is even pitiful that some have taken to Ayn Rand as their go-to thinker. It doesn't et more pathetic than that. Even today the reason the Turnbull government struggles to arrive at a compelling narrative is because it can't formulate one from a position of reason. It can only keep playing the ideological position statements as if they can substitute for actual thinking.
But The Problems Are Mounting
The truly compelling global problem is climate change. Somebody is going to have to pay to deal with it and it can't all be put on the general public nor the governments. It's going to have to come from the private sector. The rampant denialism notwithstanding, they're the facts. The added fact that our government can't bring itself to deal with those issues, and instead rolls around in the political mud trying to figure out how to get past marriage equality shows you just how feeble the minds of our politicians have become. Not only are we living in a time of catastrophic climate change, we're living in a time of catastrophic failure of intellect amongst our national leadership.
Another is the issue of the over-financialised world economy which is centred around banking and the issuing of credit to a world awash in debt. If the GFC triggered by the Lehman collapse of 2007 was one thing, we're staring down the barrel with the potential collapse of Deutsche Bank. If Deutsche Bank goes down, so do derivative trades that amount to about the same as the entire world's GDP. Angela Merkel is saying the German government won't be bailing out Deutsche Bank,but when you think about it, DB is the walking talking quacking, waddling exemplar of "too-big-to-fail". Somebody is going to have to dig deep and keep it going or else any number of scenarios that lead to the implosion of the global economy would be on the horizon - just as it was when Lehman bit the dust. Do we hear a peep out of our treasurer in Australia about all this? No. So, once again, not only are we living in a time of catastrophic economic failure, we're living in a time of catastrophic failure of intellect amongst our national leadership.
It's one of the luxuries of living in Australia - we're so far removed from the world's problems. Most of the time, the world's problem don't really affect us that directly. In the past we've sent troops to the Old World just to get ourselves involved in the world's terrible affairs (like WorldWar I!); but in most part we've sat outa great deal of global issues,and that has worked for us. And that's all well and good except with these two problems, we're firmly in orbit of the looming black hole. Honestly, conservatism is intellectually bankrupt. What we're seeing is the process of intellectual foreclosure.
It's one of the luxuries of living in Australia - we're so far removed from the world's problems. Most of the time, the world's problem don't really affect us that directly. In the past we've sent troops to the Old World just to get ourselves involved in the world's terrible affairs (like WorldWar I!); but in most part we've sat outa great deal of global issues,and that has worked for us. And that's all well and good except with these two problems, we're firmly in orbit of the looming black hole. Honestly, conservatism is intellectually bankrupt. What we're seeing is the process of intellectual foreclosure.
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